My years in the supreme court continues...

Apart from the normal appellate work of the Court, we were asked to report on the conduct of a Judge of the Allahabad High Court. Under the old order, the Privy Council would have gone into the question. But now that the Federal Court had inherited the appellate jurisdiction of the Privy Council, it followed that its. investigatory powers accompanied our inheritance.

The President entrusted the matter to the Federal Court and asked us to report whether the charges made against the Judge, or any of them, could be said to have been proved. To go into the conduct of a fellow justice was not very pleasant. The trial lasted for about three months and the Court found that about two or three of the charges against him had been proved. We submitted our report to the President who thereupon removed the Judge from the Court.

Dewan Ram Lal, retired from his office of the Chief Justice of the Simla High Court during this year, and I attended the wedding of his son Mr. S. L. Sahni. The Hon’ble Mr. Justice S. R. Das was appointed Chief Justice of the East Punjab High Court in succession to Dewan Ram Lal.

He had been a judge of the Calcutta High
Court for a number of years. I met him for the first time in Simla where I was spending a part of my vacation. He was convalesing in bed after a severe heart attack. Before I left Simla in 1949, we met at a lunch at my son Daya Krishan’s place.

He was practising in Simla. A few days before the new Constitution was inaugurated, Mr. Justice S. R. Das was appointed as the sixth Judge of the Federal Court.

The new Constitution came into force on the 26th January 1950.

All six of us were sworn in by the President as the Judges of the Supreme Court. At the first sitting of the Court, Chief Justice Kania and the Attorney General made short speeches.

To be continued...