Karnataka High Court Chief Justice PD Dinakaran passed orders in favour of a family whose hospitality he’d enjoyed in Canada, documents show.
Dinakaran has been under public scrutiny ever since a group of eminent jurists wrote to the Chief Justice of India last month opposing his promotion to the Supreme Court, saying there were corruption allegations against him.
Asked for a report, the Tamil Nadu government stated that he had encroached on large tracts of public land in his village in Thiruvallur district.
On Wednesday, 66 residents of the village lodged a police complaint claiming Dinakaran had been removing fences he had put up around the property he had forcibly occupied, to remove evidence of any such occupation.
Hindustan Times, which was the first to report on the jurists’ complaint, now has documents showing that in 2005, Dinakaran, in a land dispute he heard in the Madras High Court, ruled in favour of an NRI family well known to him. As a judge of the Madras High Court between 1996 and 2008, he presided over and passed orders in a dispute over 12,000 square feet of land in Chennai between the Pentecostal Mission and a number of petitioners, which included one Ananthi Murthy.
Dinakaran’s travel documents show that while visiting Toronto in August 2004, he was a guest of Murthy and her husband Karuna. The Murthys are also named as guardians of Dinakaran’s daughter, who is studying in the United States.
{{/usCountry}}Dinakaran’s travel documents show that while visiting Toronto in August 2004, he was a guest of Murthy and her husband Karuna. The Murthys are also named as guardians of Dinakaran’s daughter, who is studying in the United States.
{{/usCountry}}Asked for his reaction, Dinakaran’s office said he was “not willing to speak”.