Abhijit Gangopadhyay ¬ a judge who follows his own style in justice delivery

Justice Gangopadhyay is not only popular in political circles, recently posters hailing his Bengali pride were put up by citizen’s associations in different parts of Kolkata

“My hands are being tied again and again,” Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta High Court had appealed to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court about a year ago when judgments passed by him in the West Bengal school jobs scam were stayed by the division bench of the Calcutta High Court.

In a written administrative directive, Justice Gangopadhyay made a startling revelation that a lawyer had come to him to speak on behalf of an influential politician in all of these cases. What followed was that five different division benches of the Calcutta High Court recused themselves from hearing petitions challenging Justice Gangopadhyay’s order in the school jobs scam.

Also read: A judge at the centre of political debate in Bengal

On the late evening of April 28, 2023, the Supreme Court stayed Justice Gangopadhyay’s order to place before him, by midnight, documents based on which the apex court had earlier in the day reassigned a case to itself. The case concerns the school jobs-for-bribe scame which is being investigated by the CBI and ED. With the role of Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee also under the scanner in the case, Mr. Banerjee recently moved the Supreme Court, pointing its attention to a TV interview of Justice Gangopadhyay in which he spoke about the case pending before him. On Friday, the CJI Bench went through the transcript and directed the Calcutta High Court Chief Justice to transfer the case from Justice Gangopadhyay to another judge.

 Justice Gangopadhyay (was a lawyer at Calcutta High Court before he was appointed as Additional Judge in May 2018 and elevated as a permanent Judge of the Calcutta High Court in July 2020. A graduate from Calcutta University’s Hazra Law College, he did his schooling from Kolkata’s Mitra Institution.

As an advocate he was well-known among his peers for handling briefs related to education, particularly the West Bengal School Service Commission, the recruitment agency that is at the centre of the controversy in the school jobs scam.

As the Judge of Calcutta High Court, 61-year-old-Justice Gangopadhyay had directed investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in over a dozen of cases relating to the school jobs scam. In several of his judgments, Justice Gangopadhyay had directed investigating agencies to file FIRs by the end of the day and question the accused including Ministers or chairpersons of a board or recruitment body by midnight.  Not only did he order investigation by central agencies in the scam, he often questioned the tardy pace of investigation and impressed upon the agencies to apprehend the “real culprits” in the recruitment scam.