In a sharp intervention, the Supreme Court has pressed pause on a Madhya Pradesh High Court order that branded a POCSO trial judge “intellectually dishonest” and ordered a five-year sweep of his past verdicts.
The stay came from a Bench led by Chief Justice BR Gavai and Justice K Vinod Chandran, acting on a petition by judicial officer Vivek Singh Raghuwanshi. The judge had argued that the High Court’s rebuke was “stigmatic, unjustified, and delivered without affording him a chance to be heard.”
The controversy stems from a July 25 ruling in which Justices Vivek Agarwal and Avanindra Kumar Singh of the Madhya Pradesh High Court overturned a POCSO conviction, faulting Raghuwanshi for ignoring an ossification test that hinted the victim might have been an adult. Their words were unusually severe — describing his conduct as “the height of intellectual dishonesty and negligence” — and instructing district authorities to seize all his case files from the past five years for scrutiny.
Raghuwanshi, defending his decision, told the Supreme Court that he had relied on the school’s scholar register to fix the victim’s age — an accepted practice under settled law — and that neither side had brought the medical reports into contention. He added that even if those reports were considered, they would not have altered the conclusion on the victim’s age.
After reviewing the record, the Supreme Court stayed the High Court’s remarks and the inquiry order, clarifying that the acquittal itself would remain untouched. The High Court has also been added as a respondent in the ongoing proceedings.
For now, the apex court’s message is clear — judicial criticism, however stern, must not cross the line into personal condemnation without due process.
