The judge who had resigned after acquitting all the accused in the Mecca Masjid blast, was back on duty on Thursday after the High Court rejected his resignation.
Acting Chief Justice Ramesh Ranganathan not only declined NIA court Judge K Ravinder Reddy’s resignation but also cancelled the 15-day leave the judge had sought. Ranganathan asked Reddy to report to work immediately.
Reddy, the Fourth Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge, had put in his papers on April 16 soon after he delivered the verdict in the Mecca Masjid bomb blast case in which he acquitted all the accused, including Swami Assemanand. In a letter to the metropolitan sessions judge and the chief justice of the high court, Reddy said he was resigning owing to personal reasons.
In the wake of the Mecca Masjid bomb blast verdict, security was beefed up for the judge. “…there is no specific alert, but following the verdict, security has been stepped up around his house since yesterday itself,” a senior police official told PTI.
Meanwhile, Reddy is also under scrutiny by the HC’s Vigilance Department after a complaint was filed by a litigant in a land dispute case alleging that he showed “undue haste” in granting anticipatory bail to an accused in the case. Wanting a “thorough inquiry to know the corrupt practices” of the judge, the complaint Krishna Reddy claimed that the judge went against “settled practice” by granting relief to the accused whose five previous attempts at obtaining anticipatory bail from various courts had failed.filed by a litigant.