Justice Senguptas daughter, Angana, had gone to London in 1990, when he was a sitting judge, and completed her bar exams over the next six years. At a conservative figure of 15,000 pounds a year, her education would have cost about Rs 5 million. Subir Majumdar, a solicitor in London, is believed to have given a statement that he financed her out of old friendship with Justice Sengupta.
During the six years, the Sengupta parents visited the daughter and had long summer holidays in Europe. Justice Sengupta also received over Rs 4 million in foreign exchange which he could not explain. So the income tax department called in the Enforcement Directorate. It charged him with acquiring and transferring this foreign exchange, and produced him before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate who placed him under judicial custody for a fortnight. A week later, the Calcutta high court granted him bail, and asked the Enforcement Directorate to question him at his home. Chandraswami, who faces similar charges of foreign exchange manipulation, spent six months in Tihar jail.
Justice Ajit Kumar Sengupta started his career in Calcutta as a junior of advocate Gauri Mitra. Later, when he became judge, Gautam Mitra, the advocate son of Gauri Mitra, frequently appeared before Sengupta and invariably got favourable verdicts. He also frequently visited Justice Senguptas house.
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As advocate, Justice Sengupta specialised in cases involving income tax, customs, import licensing and exchange control. He was made judge of Calcutta high court in 1984. After his elevation, a number of his ex-clients got injunctions from him. One of them was Anil Kumar Parolia, who had been charged with underinvoicing and use of forged licences.
But soon the range of beneficiaries of his orders extended far beyond his ex-clients, and beyond Calcutta. Many persons caught with smuggled and contraband goods, when they faced detention orders under COFEPOSA, discovered that they had a residence in Calcutta, went to Justice Sengupta, and got an injunction against arrest. Amongst them were Khalid Pahalwan of room no 124, 33 Haji Ismail Building, Pakmodia Street, Mumbai, who was caught on December 28, 1979; Rakesh Kumar of 2775 Gally Gariya Kuchalan, Daryagunj, Delhi; Prataprao Solanki of Market Road, Cochin; and Ulhas Ghosalkar of 1777 Barrister Nath Pai Chowk, Ratnagiri. It was a remarkable coincidence that all these COFEPOSA accused happened to have a residence in Calcutta and happened to go to Justice Sengupta for succour. There were scores of others.
Escaping arrest was only one of the uses to which injunctions from Justice Sengupta were put. People in trouble with the law also used injunctions to slow down legal proceedings, ward off investigations into smuggling and underinvoicing, and protecting themselves against disciplinary action for dishonesty and worse misdemeanours. An injunction, once given, could take years to vacate; if it did not, Justice Sengupta helped prolong its life. For instance, the cases of our Mumbai smugglers came up before him on June 20, 1984. He postponed the hearing 20 times in the next 10 months. Each time the officials and government counsel attended court; the smugglers did not have to, since their counsel never failed to get a postponement. Finally, the Maharashtra government moved a transfer application before the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court issued a show-cause notice to the smugglers and stayed further proceedings before Justice Sengupta.
In 1984, the Calcutta customs discovered a revolver on a customs officer, A K Kapoor. Justice Sengupta passed an injunction preventing the customs from confiscating the gun. The customs department charged T D Karamchandani, a customs officer, of absenting himself without taking leave, going to Hong Kong and spending foreign exchange of undisclosed origin, and started departmental proceedings against him. Karamchandani went to Justice Sengupta and got an order to be allowed to see copies of documents related to the case. When he was so allowed, he said that one of the documents he had asked for was not in the file. His counsel reported to the court that the documents had not been furnished. The collector of customs, Sukumar Mukhopadhyay, had written in the file that Karamchandani should be allowed to inspect. Despite this, Justice Sengupta summoned Mr Mukhopadhyay, detained him till the end of the day, and fined him Rs 1,700. The appeal against this order came up before a two-judge bench of
Calcutta high court 11 years later; in 1995 it exonerated Mr Mukhopadhyay and laid down as a law that no court deciding (the contempt of court) is entitled to take frivolities and trivialities into account while finding fault with the conduct of the person against contempt proceeding is taken.
One of the commonest crimes of the 1980s was to import something and to pass it off as something else which bore lower import duty for instance, to import clothes and pass them off as rags. In one case, printing paper was sought to be passed off as paper waste. Although photographs of the paper rolls were furnished, Justice Sengupta ruled in favour of the partial smuggler. In other cases in which he intervened, perfectly good steel was passed off as steel scrap.
I am not reporting these proclivities of Justice Sengupta for the first time; they came to the notice of the Supreme Court very early, and it routinely countermanded his orders. On February 28, 1985 India Today reported on buses with cancelled permits running, excise contractors not having to pay dues, and errant dealers in foodgrains carrying on business as usual under the Calcutta high courts protection. It reported the strong strictures passed on Justice Senguptas orders by the Supreme Court. But he went on dispensing his brand of justice for another nine years.
Justice Senguptas career represents only an extreme case of the freedom under which our judiciary functions. This freedom was guaranteed by our Constitution to safeguard its integrity. But as Justice Sengupta proved, the constitutional guarantee equally extends to arbitrariness, and even to lack of integrity. The judiciary faces little scrutiny from the media, which are mortally afraid of being charged with contempt of court. No one outside has the power to discipline it, and its own mechanisms of self-discipline are woefully inadequate. Only the judges can reform the judicial system. They should make a beginning.