New Delhi, Aug. 31 -- A Delhi court has sentenced conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar to eight years in jail for impersonating a Supreme Court judge during a bail proceeding, terming the act "institutional sacrilege" and a possible attack on the very integrity of the judicial process.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Harshita Mishra was hearing arguments on sentence against Chandrashekhar. She awarded him two years' rigorous imprisonment each for impersonating a public servant and intimidating a public servant, and four years for criminal intimidation through anonymous communication. The court directed all the substantive sentences to run consecutively, making the total sentence eight years.
In an order dated August 29, the court said, "The deliberate, calculated and deceptive manner in which the offences were committed by the convict in this case warrants a sentence commensurate with the gravity of the attack upon the rule of law and the administration of justice."
On August 20, the trial court held Chandrasekhar guilty of the offences under IPC sections 170, 189 (threat of injury to a public servant) and 507, and described his crime as a "direct affront" to the independence and sanctity of the judicial process.
The court said the case was "profoundly disturbing" and qualitatively different from other cases of impersonation as it struck at the root of one of the foundational pillars of a democratic state, the judiciary. "The convict deliberately manufactured the identity of a Judge of the highest constitutional court of the Land for the purpose of influencing a judicial proceeding, which was kind of institutional sacrilege," the court said.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.