‘Court cannot be used to settle personal scores’

A petitioner,found to be an alleged extortionist,tried to use court proceedings to fleece money from others. The builder,against whom the suit was filed,had in fact,constructed a five-storeyed building flouting all municipal laws. And the MCD had “deliberately” chosen to close its eyes and allowed the illegal construction to go on.

When a bewildered Additional District Judge (ADJ),Kamini Lau,figured out what had happened,she held that a court could not be permitted to be used as a platform where all wrongdoers blatantly abuse legal processes.

The court then decided to take everyone to task for having “scant regard for the law” and “shutting their eyes to the violations”.

ADJ Lau dismissed the petitioner’s suit and imposed a penalty of Rs 20,000 upon him. The builder has also been asked to do away with the violations and the copy of the judgment has to be placed before the Monitoring Committee,Supreme Court of India,for appropriate action.

The MCD Commissioner has also been ordered to take adequate departmental action against errant officials.

The suit was filed by Gopi Chand against Ravinder Singh and the MCD in January 2006. Chand claimed that Singh had constructed a building in his neighbourhood — Old Rajinder Nagar — by encroaching upon the public land and that the structure was tilted,at around 80 degrees,towards the road. Despite the complaints,the MCD took no action,he contended. Defending himself,Singh said that Chand himself was a builder and had filed the suit with an ulterior motive to extort money from him.

Singh also said that Chand did not own a house in the neighbourhood,as he had been claiming.

Singh also produced before the court an audio cassette,allegedly containing a dialogue between Chand and another builder regarding filing of a suit for extracting money. The MCD put forth a technical opposition that the suit was not maintainable and that there was no cause of action against them.

Adjudicating the suit,ADJ Lau found it to be strange that everyone,despite being on the wrong side of the law,has been asking for relief in accordance with legal provisions.

“The present litigation is an abuse of the legal process where both the parties to the litigation have scant respect for the law. The plaintiff is an alleged extortionist,who for oblique motives has used the platform of this court to secure personal benefits by legal intimidation. The first defendant is a builder of a five-storeyed building,inclined at an angle of 80 degrees towards road… All this never bothered the MCD officials,who again for the reasons quite obvious,after completing the necessary formalities turned a blind eye to the whole issue,” noted the court in its recent order.

“The reason why a genuine litigation suffers and loses faith in the judicial system is because of these kinds of frivolous and extortionist litigations. The courts are required to guard against such an abuse and it is time to come down heavily on those litigations resulting in waste of public time and money,” ADJ Lau said,dismissing Chand’s suit.

The audio-cassette along with its transcript was placed before the MCD Commissioner for an inquiry on the allegations of an unholy nexus between its officials,builders and extortionists.