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Former judge gets one year jail for evading arrest in 2003 in Chandigarh
The accused, who now runs an academy for law aspirants in Sector 24, was caught taking bribe at his house on May 11, 2003.
A local court on Friday awarded one year jail to former judicial magistrate first class (JMIC) SS Bhardwaj for evading arrest in 2003.
The former judge was taken into custody on Wednesday for escaping the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) custody when he was caught taking bribe at his house on May 11, 2003.
The court of additional district and sessions judge Ashwani Kumar Mehta also imposed a fine of ₹5,000 on Bhardwaj, while allowing the state’s appeal in this regard. He was the country’s first judge to be convicted for graft in 2009. He was sentenced to three years jail by the CBI court, but as he filed an appeal before the Punjab and Haryana high court (HC), his sentence was suspended for the time. The HC is still to decide on that appeal.
In the present case, charges were framed against Bhardwaj under Section 224 (resistance or obstruction by a person to his lawful apprehension) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Bhardwaj, who now runs an academy for law aspirants in Sector 24, was acquitted in the case in 2014, following which the state had filed an appeal against the order. Allowing the same plea, the court now sentenced him to one year in jail.
The CBI had caught Bhardwaj, then posted in the UT district courts, while accepting ₹7 lakh as the first instalment of ₹11-lakh bribe to secure bail for an accused. Another judge and co-accsed, who had granted the bail a day before, was arrested the same day based on Bhardwaj’ s statement. However, Bhardwaj fled the same night and surrendered later.
Bhardwaj’s name also cropped up in the Haryana Civil Services (judicial) recruitment scam when the challan was filed before court. According to police investigation, two of the accused took coaching classes at his institute before the entrance exam
