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Senior Advocate M. Sricharan Rangarajan has written a letter strongly denying allegations made in an impeachment motion against Justice G.R. Swaminathan of the Madras High Court.
More than 100 MPs have signed the motion, which accuses the judge of bias and claims he favoured certain lawyers, including Rangarajan, whose name was wrongly mentioned in the document. Rangarajan says the accusations are based on wrong information and misunderstandings. He clarifies that he has no link to the Deepathoon (Stone Lamp Pillar) case, which is believed to have sparked the complaint. He also points out that a similar informal petition had been circulating online earlier, raising doubts about the timing of the impeachment move. Responding to claims that he was given special treatment because he belongs to a "particular community," he cites simple facts. In the three-month period questioned in the complaint, Justice Swaminathan disposed of over 3,000 cases, and only 14 involved him. The judge has cleared more than 1 lakh cases since 2017, he notes, making it unfair to pick a tiny set of cases to raise doubts. He also says the petition contains basic mistakes -- wrong case numbers, wrong timings, and even mixing up cases from different benches, which shows how weak the allegations are. He adds that many other senior lawyers from various communities appear regularly before the judge and have far more cases decided in their favour, but none of them have been named. Rangarajan questions why he alone is being targeted. He suggests he is being used as a "soft target" to indirectly attack the judge. He expresses worry that the silence of many in the legal community encourages such baseless accusations. He also highlights the irony that some MPs who signed the impeachment motion have previously hired him as their lawyer, and in at least one case, Justice Swaminathan gave a ruling in their favour. He asks whether those orders were "favouring him" or simply delivering justice to the parties involved. Sharing his own journey from international scholarships to public service and eventually becoming the youngest Senior Advocate designated by the Madras High Court, he says the allegations attack not just him, but the integrity and fairness of the legal profession. Rangarajan ends by urging lawyers to speak up against false charges, warning that staying silent only allows such attacks to grow. He says the values taught by his mentors and his late father guide him to remain calm and committed to the truth. (ANI)
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