100 case files of former Madras HC judge go missing, court orders CBI probe

The matter came to light when a petitioner submitted in court that though his plea was allowed, he had not received written orders.
100 case files of former Madras HC judge go missing, court orders CBI probe
100 case files of former Madras HC judge go missing, court orders CBI probe
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In a strange turn of events at the Madras High Court, 100 case files of a retired judge have gone missing and a CBI probe has now been ordered.

According to Times of India which first reported the story, T Mathivanan, a retired judge of the Madras High Court had delivered judgements in over 100 cases but the case files i.e. the actual orders were not available to the litigants.

When the matter came up before Justice G Jayachandran on Wednesday, he remarked that the situation was akin to shipping vessels going missing at the Bermuda Triangle.

An internal investigation into the issue, as ordered by Chief Justice Indira Banerjee, had not yielded any results. Hence, the court was constrained to order a CBI investigation into the issue.

Pointing out that the Madras High Court was also a Court of Records, Justice G Jayachandran reportedly said, “This court is worried about the missing case records. Inquiries with the registry reveal that about 100 bundles in which the judge had reserved orders are missing and the Chief Justice has ordered the registrar(vigilance) to make inquiries and trace the bundles missing from the residence of Justice T Mathivanan. Reconstruction of the missing record may be the solution on the administrative side but the fact that 100 case bundles not returned from the residence of the retired judge cannot be ignored. It appears that despite in-house investigation ordered by the Chief Justice, till date case records sent to the judge's records have not been retrieved.”

According to the Press Trust of India, the matter came to light when a petitioner submitted in court that though his plea was allowed by Justice Mathivanan in March last year with pronouncement of the order in an open court, he was not able to get a copy of the written order.

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