Justice Karnan, the judge who took on Supreme Court, to walk out of jail

KOLKATA: Former Calcutta High Court judge Justice CS Karnan, guilty of contempt of court, is set to be released on Wednesday.

He will be set free from the Presidency Jail in Kolkata.

On June 20, Karnan was arrested from a guest house in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore by the West Bengal Police.

Justice Karnan was arrested following the Supreme Court order that sentenced him to six months imprisonment for contempt.

Karnan on June 22, moved the Supreme Court seeking bail and suspension of six-month sentence awarded to him in May.

The SC, however, refused to entertain Karnan's bail plea.

A vacation bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul also said, "We can't suspend the sentence as the order of the sentence was passed by a seven-judge bench."

"Sorry, nevertheless," Justice Chandrachud said, declining the bail plea.

The bench said this as Justice Karnan's counsel Mathew J Nadumpara urged it to grant bail to the former judge.

Nedumpara said that this court had all the powers and should grant the interim bail till the reopening of the court.

To this, the vacation bench said it could not override the order of the seven-judge bench.

The former judge was earlier taken to Kolkata by flight from Chennai early morning. 

Karnan, who was eluding arrest for more than a month, retired from service earlier in June.

The SC's seven-judge bench had held him guilty of contempt of court for his comments against the Chief Justice of India and other judges of the higher judiciary.