Calcutta Judge Soumitra Sen resigned ahead of the Impeachment Process in Lok Sabha

Calcutta judge Soumitra Sen on 1 September 2011 resigned from the position of judge. He submitted his resignation to the President prior to impeachment process scheduled in the Lok Sabha and after the upper House had overwhelmingly voted to declare him guilty of financial misconduct.

To complete the impeachment process began against Sen the Lok Sabha had to pass a motion, which was to taken up on 5 and 6 September 2011.

The Rajya Sabha on 18 August 2011 had passed a motion overwhelmingly to impeach the judge, who was accused of misappropriating Rs 33.23 lakh under his custody as a court-appointed receiver and misrepresenting facts before a court in a 1983 case. Sen became the first judge to be impeached by the Rajya Sabha.

After his elevation as judge in 2003, Sen had failed to declare that he had collected an amount of Rs 33 lakh earlier as a receiver in a case. He returned the money with interest only after the High Court in 2006 directed him to do so. He turned down then Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan’s advice in 2008 to step down because of the controversy. Even after the Rajya Sabha voted in favour of his impeachment he had refused to step down.

Justice Sen was found guilty of misappropriating sale proceeds to the tune of Rs 24 lakh in a case in 1984 where he was appointed as receiver by the Calcutta High Court. He was an advocate at that time. He was later directed to deposit Rs 52 lakh by the High Court. He had allegedly unauthorisedly taken out Rs 25 lakh from another account and invested it elsewhere.  An in-house committee in its 6 February 2008 report had found him guilty of breach of trust and misappropriation of receiver's funds for his personal gain.  A three-member committee headed Supreme Court judge Justice B Sudershan Reddy in its report of September 2010 found Justice Sen guilty of misbehaviour.