Jabalpur, April 2 The Madhya Pradesh High Court on Thursday directed that a criminal contempt case be registered against BJP MLA and mining baron Sanjay Pathak for trying to contact its judge regarding an alleged illegal mining issue.
With this direction, MP Chief Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Vinay Saraf disposed of a petition in the matter while rejecting Pathak’s objections.
“In fact, the division bench took suo motu action against Pathak’s contemptuous act of contacting Justice Vishal Mishra over the phone,” Katni resident Ashutosh Dixit’s counsel Arvind Shrivastava told PTI.
In September last year, Justice Mishra had recused from hearing an alleged illegal mining matter. The judge had then disclosed that Pathak had attempted to call him “to have a discussion regarding this particular matter, therefore, I am not inclined to entertain this writ petition”.
Dixit had filed the writ petition alleging that three companies associated with the BJP MLA were engaged in “illegal and excess mining” in the Sihora area of Jabalpur district and also in forest land.
“According to my client, former MP minister Pathak contacted high court judge Justice Vishal Mishra, which amounts to an attempt to influence judicial proceedings,” said Shrivastava.
He said Justice Mishra had then directed that the matter be placed before the Chief Justice at the administrative level.
According to Dixit, he had filed complaints before the authorities, but no concrete action was taken. He then moved the HC seeking action against Pathak, who represents the Vijayraghavgarh assembly constituency in Katni district.
