04-06-2025
HC for compulsory retirement of Punjab judge who presided over Kathua trial
The Punjab and Haryana high court is learnt to have recommended compulsory retirement of a district and sessions judge, Tejwinder Singh, a Punjab cadre officer, who conducted a trial in the gangrape and murder of an eight-year-old Kathua girl.
The full court of the high court, which met last week before the commencement of the summer holidays, took the decision in the meeting chaired by chief justice Sheel Nagu after an internal probe indicted the judge in a case of allegedly 'accepting favours and misconduct', multiple sources confirmed.
It is learnt an internal probe was initiated in 2020 after complaints of accepting 'favours from litigants' and allegations of 'lavish expenses' on the construction of a house. Upon the high court's recommendation, a formal notification is issued by the state government.
Singh conducted the trial in the infamous Kathua rape and murder case of a Bakarwal minor girl reported in January 2018 in Jammu.
It was transferred to Pathankot on apex court intervention and in June 2019, Singh, then a district and sessions judge, Pathankot, had convicted six men in the case observing that 'strained relation between the local Hindu community and nomadic Bakarwal Muslims was a strong motive behind the rape and murder.'
His last posting was as presiding officer, industrial tribunal in Patiala—a low-key post. However, now judicial work has been withdrawn from him.
Singh had joined the Punjab judicial service in 1991 at the age of 23 and figured in the 1993 edition of the Limca Book of Records as India's youngest magistrate. In the seniority list of the state's superior judicial service, he figured at serial number two.
