NEW DELHI: Former Supreme Court (SC) judge AK Patnaik has completed his inquiry into allegations that middlemen and fixers, in collusion with dismissed and disgruntled SC employees, routinely attempted to manipulate listing of matters in the SC registry for hearing before benches desired by litigants and lawyers.

Justice Patnaik had taken help from the CBI , Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police to probe several specific allegations of cases getting listed before a desired bench and sources said at the end of the inquiry, some instances were found to be true.

On being contacted by TOI, Justice Patnaik said, "I have completed the inquiry assigned to me by the Supreme Court. Writing of the report will take at least four weeks. I expect to submit the report to the SC either by the end of August or by September first week."

However, Justice AK Patnaik declined to comment on the findings of the inquiry into the allegations. When reminded that on April 27, he had told TOI that he "will find the truth", Justice Patnaik said, "That is precisely what I have achieved at the end of the inquiry." A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and R F Nariman had on April 25 asked Justice Patnaik to probe the extraordinary allegations made by advocate Utsav Bains.

"I will find the truth and get to the bottom of the allegations. If the allegations prove to be correct, the culprits will be brought to book," Justice Patnaik had told TOI on April 27. "My experience as a judge of constitutional courts for over 20 years and the same number of years as an advocate, during which I handled different kinds of criminal cases, will come in handy in dealing with the issue at hand," he had said.

In 2013, a bench led by Justice Patnaik had attempted to cleanse the electoral arena by striking down a provision of the Representation of the People Act that allowed convicted MPs and MLAs to continue as legislators by merely filing an appeal in a higher court within 90 days of a court convicting them in a criminal case and sentencing them to two or more years in prison.

Justice Patnaik had firsthand experience in dealing with the case relating to Board of Control for Cricket in India, in which a bench led by him had laid the foundation for effecting structural changes in the cricket board to make its functioning more transparent and rid it of fixers. "The experience in handling the BCCI case will surely come in handy while firming up the rough plan of action for probing the allegations levelled in the lawyer's affidavit," Justice Patnaik had said.



In Video: Probe found some instances of Supreme Court listings being fixed: Former judge