Justice Sadhana Jadhav of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday recused herself from hearing petitions filed in the Bhima Koregaon case, Live Law reported. Jadhav is the third Bombay High Court judge to withdraw from the hearing the petitions related to the case this year.
Before Jadhav, Justices PB Varale and SS Shinde had recused themselves from hearing the matter, Bar and Bench reported.
Earlier too in 2019 and 2020, Jadhav had excused herself from hearing Bhima Koregaon matters.
The Bhima Koregaon case pertains to caste violence in a village near Pune in 2018. Sixteen people were arrested for allegedly plotting the violence.
On Tuesday, petitions related to the case reached Jadhav after going through multiple judges.
She, however, said that these matters not be listed before her.
Justice Shinde had been hearing petitions related to the Bhima Koregaon case between 2020 and 2021. However, by the end of 2021, they were transferred to another bench led by Justice Nitin Jamdar and then to Justice Varale.
After Justice Varale recused himself from hearing the matters, they were sent last month to an alternate bench led by Justice Shinde.
Shinde also excused himself from hearing the matters, after which the defence lawyers sought the help of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta to assign them to a new bench. They were sent to Justice SB Shukre.
But after Shukre was transferred to a Nagpur Bench earlier this week, the matters reached Justice Jadhav for hearing.
The defence lawyers will again ask the Chief Justice for assigning an alternate bench to hear the matters.
Earlier too in 2019, five judges of the Supreme Court had recused themselves from hearing a Bhima Koregaon case involving human rights activist Gautam Navlakha. The judges did not offer any reasons for withdrawing from the case.
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