Gujarat's mystery of missing case files: dubious role of registrar under lens

Incidentally, AT Ukrani, the current Registrar at the Gujarat High Court Registry, was the registrar at both the courts in Surat and Patan when the files went missing between 2010 and 2021.

Even though the Gujarat High Court, after being apprised of the matter had rapped Ukrani, while ordering an FIR against people responsible for the goof-up, Justice Sandeep Bhatt, the high court judge who gave the order, was soon transferred to another bench.

Files missing in over 20 cases

The entire matter came to light after Jayashreeben Joshi, a 71-year-old from Patan district approached the Gujarat High Court to complain about the missing file of a criminal case that she had been pursuing since 2010.

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The matter escalated quickly when it was found that Joshi’s case was not an isolated one and that files of more than 20 cases, dating back to more than 10 years, had been missing from the Surat and Patan district courts.

“In 2010, Joshi filed a case in the Radhanpur Sessions court claiming that a property belonging to her family was being illegally and forcefully occupied by a local BJP leader. The family also claimed in their petition that they were threatened to not pursue the case. However, a criminal case was filed after Joshi’s son was physically assaulted by the said occupants of the land,” said advocate MS Kazi who represented Joshi in the case.

“It came as a surprise to my client when she was informed that the case that she had been pursuing for two decades doesn’t exist on the registry of the court. That is when she approached the high court for a recourse,” he added.

Cases against BJP leader, ‘sangh’ outfit

Among the missing case files was a case filed by Surat-based activist Krishnakant against a decision of the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) in 2015; and a criminal case lodged by a tribal farmer against a former BJP councillor in Surat for assaulting him and passing casteist slurs at him.

In 2015, Krishnakant, a tribal rights activist and environmentalist had challenged the decision of the SMC to lease 3,338 square meters of land to Doctor Ambedkar Vansavsi Kalyan Trust for 99 years at a rent of Rs 1 a year.

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“The trust is a sister organisation of the RSS and works primarily amongst tribals to convert them from Christianity to Hinduism or as they call it ‘ghar wapsi’ (homecoming). At that time, the organisation already had a grand office in the Adajan area of Surat and had demanded more land to expand its office,” Krishnakant told The Federal.

“In 2015, in a meeting that lasted for about three minutes, the standing committee of the SMC took an unanimous decision to lease a huge plot of ‘gauchar’ (pasture) land to the Dr Ambedkar Vanvasi Kalyan Trust and the documents of the same were formally handed over to Mohan Bhagwat when he had visited the city in August that year,” he added.

'Case in limbo after three hearings'

Krishnakant says that he challenged the SMC’s decision in court as per Supreme Court’s order, a gauchar land cannot be allotted to anyone without court orders.

“After I challenged the decision, the SMC argued that it was waste land of the government and moreover it was being leased and not allotted to the organisation. From December 2015 to September 2016, there were three hearings of the case and after that the case was not listed for more than a year. In March 2017, my lawyer was informed that the case file had gone missing and was not traceable in the court’s registry. Since then, the case has been in limbo,” he added.

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Judge raises concern over registrar’s role

During the hearing of (Jayashreeben) Joshi’s petition in the high court on February 24 this year, Justice Bhatt was informed that 15 of the case files were missing from the Surat court and five from that in Patan.

“Perused the record placed before me about the incidents of missing, not found and not traceable court file papers in the subordinate courts in the State. After a thorough search based upon the above-mentioned key words, the Registrar General has prepared a list of missing and untraceable files and papers from the year 2010 until the date of the report,” Justice Bhatt said, while raising serious concerns over the role of Ukrani in the case of the missing files.

Reading out the information provided to him, Justice Bhatt said Ukrani during his tenure as the registrar of the sixth Additional District Judge, Surat “had carried physical files of 15 cases and their judgments with him and had not returned the physical record and proceedings of the said cases to the district court, Surat, even after a period of seven months after his transfer to Radhanpur Sessions court”.

Only 6 case files were returned

The court observed that while Ukrani, following orders of the Principal District Judge of Surat to return the files, sent back physical record and proceedings of six of the case files on August 12, 2019 while serving at the Radhanpur Sessions Court (Patan), 14 other files including Joshi’s are still missing.

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The high court particularly pointed to Joshi’s case which has been de-listed from the record after the file went missing.

“The court is flabbergasted to know that the person named as registrar in the said courts at the time of missing files is the same and has been working in the high court for the past six years. During this period, this individual has remained a subject of controversy, causing misunderstandings among the judges of this court. Furthermore, he has shown audacity in deliberately delaying the compliance of judicial orders/directions issued by court in presenting the missing papers,” Justice Bhatt observed.

According to sources, while Ukrani, after the Surat court’s order took six months to return as many files in 2019, he had simultaneously begun picking up those from the registrar office in the Radhanpur Sessions Court.

Case reassigned; judge transferred to another bench

Noticeably, after Justice Bhatt’s remarks, the case took an unexpected turn as Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal reassigned the case to Justice Ilesh Vora while transferring Justice Bhatt to another bench.

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Justice Bhatt had also ordered an FIR against responsible people and had sought reports from the Registrar General, Registrar (Judicial) and Registrar (Administration) regarding the missing files. The case is listed for further hearing in the court of Justice Ilesh Vora in March this year.