Eight judges transferred

MUMBAI: Eight judges from the city civil and sessions court have been transferred out of Mumbai following a Bombay High Court notification. Three of the judges have recently delivered judgments in high-profile cases the city has witnessed in the last few years. The notification, dated March 1, was sent to the sessions court by the high court chief registrar.Sources said the transfers were routine but had come a month earlier.
The eight are additional sessions judge M S Kshirsagar, additional sessions judge R R Deshmukh, S Malpani Pawar, additional sessions judge A Subramaniam, special judge S A Deshmukh, and judges V P Gaikwad, R G Asmar and R R Vaishnav. They have been transferred to towns in the state: Kshirsagar to Basmat Nagar, R R Deshmukh to Aurangabad, Pawar to Dhule, Subramaniam and S A Deshmukh to Yavatmal , Gaikwad to Latur, Asmar to Gondia and Vaishnav to Gondia.
On January 30, S A Deshmukh acquitted four who allegedly kidnapped and murdered Adnan Patrawala (16) in 2007. Sujit Nair, Ayush Bhat, Rajiv Dhariya and Amit Kaushal were acquitted after the prosecution’s circumstantial evidence could not be proved in court. A few days later on February 1, Subramaniam convicted hotelier Lalit D’Souza for pumping six bullets into his sister Lorna in October 2007 over a property dispute. Lalit was sentenced to three years under a lesser charge of causing grievous hurt. Soon after the punishment was announced, he was granted bail on a surety of Rs 15,000.
Subramaniam this week convicted multi-crore stamp paper scam kingpin Abdul Karim Telgi to life imprisonment in three cases of forgery, fraud and cheating.
On February 27, Pawar had acquitted three people in a rape and immoral trafficking case involving senior inspector Arun Borude. Borude had allegedly raped a minor in 2010. He committed suicide on December 29, 2010. Three of the other accused, Shanta-bai Gaikwad, who alleged pushed the girl into prostitution and two alleged clients Mohanchand Shyam and Chandrabhan Gupta, were acquitted after the prosecution failed to prove the case.
The 2010 Kurla rape-murder case trial is being heard by Pawar, while S A Deshmukh is hearing two cases on gangster Arun Gawli and a case involving the murder of matka king Suresh Bhagat. The 2006 Lakkhan Bhaiyya fake encounter case trial was being conducted in Subramaniam’s court.