A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Saturday acquitted former Punjab and Haryana high court judge Nirmal Yadav in a 2008 corruption case.
The much-awaited judgment was pronounced by special CBI judge Alka Malik at the district courts complex in Chandigarh in the post-lunch session.
The initial FIR was registered by Chandigarh Police on August 13, 2008, in the case that made national headlines and was stated to be the first case where a sitting judge had been booked in a corruption case.
According to the prosecution, a packet containing ₹15 lakh in cash was mistakenly delivered at the Sector 11 residence of justice Nirmaljit Kaur, also a judge at the high court at that time. She complained to the police who registered an FIR. The police said the cash was actually meant for justice Nirmal Yadav. The allegation was that the cash was payback for a favourable judgment in a property dispute in Panchkula in 2007 in favour of Sanjeev Bansal, then Haryana additional advocate general, property dealer Rajiv Gupta and Delhi-based hotelier Ravinder Singh Bhasin, who were other accused in the case.
Justice Yadav went on leave after her name figured in the scandal in 2008 and was subsequently transferred to the Uttarakhand high court.
Within a fortnight of the incident, the case was handed over to the CBI. An internal panel of Supreme Court and the CBI, both cleared justice Nirmaljit Kaur, who was also transferred to the Rajasthan high court in July 2012. She returned to the Punjab and Haryana high court in 2018, and retired in 2021.
In 2009, the CBI filed a closure report saying that no case was made out.
However, the CBI court rejected the closure report and ordered the agency to re-investigate the case. On July 28, 2010, the then Chief Justice of India accorded sanction to CBI to prosecute justice Nirmal Yadav and the President of India’s nod came on March 1, 2011.
The CBI filed a chargesheet in the case on March 3, 2011, a day before justice Yadav was to retire. Justice Yadav approached the high court and the Supreme Court unsuccessfully on two occasions challenging proceedings. In 2014, the CBI court ordered framing of charges against all the accused in the case including justice Nirmal Yadav. The trial concluded on March 27.
As many as 69 prosecution witnesses deposed out of which 13 were turned hostile. Four witnesses have died during the trial. Some important witnesses who turned hostile include the personal security officer justice Yadav, Renu Bansal (wife of Sanjiv Bansal), Raj Kumar Jindal (cousin of Sanjeev Bansal), and Santosh Tripathi, a former colleague of Bansal. Sanjeev Bansal, whose clerk misheard and thus misdelivered the money to justice Nirmaljit Kaur’s residence, died of a brain tumour during the pendency of the trial. Over the years, various judges who held charge of the CBI court heard the case — at least 300 times in these 17 years.
