Cut, copy and paste remarks struck off: High Court never asked POCSO judge to explain, says Supreme Court
Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya expunge strictures and an ACR direction that a Rajasthan High Court Single Judge ordered against a district judge, holding the remarks were made without notice.
A Rajasthan High Court Single Judge had said a district judge in a special POCSO court was shirking her duty. The order called her judgment a product of cut, copy and paste, scripted by a stenographer and signed unread, and ordered it placed in her annual confidential report. She was never asked for her side first.
On 2 November 2026 the Supreme Court expunged those remarks and the directions that followed. A bench of Justice Sandeep Mehta and Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya held that such strictures, recorded on the judicial side without a show-cause opportunity, offend natural justice. Justice Mehta wrote the judgment, which is marked reportable.
The judicial officer is anonymised in the judgment as XXX, a District Judge cadre officer of the Rajasthan Judicial Services, and this report follows that choice.
The bench opened by invoking forgiveness, citing Alexander Pope, the Jain virtue of uttama kshama and a Sanskrit adage on forgiveness as the ornament of the brave. It called the case a fit illustration for exercising that virtue.
Two trials, two judgments, one day
One FIR under the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 named more than one accused. One of them was a child in conflict with law.
After a preliminary assessment under Section 15(1) of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, the Juvenile Justice Board decided that the child should be tried as an adult. It sent the case to the Special Judge, POCSO Cases.
An adult co-accused was tried in a separate sessions case arising from the same FIR. Section 23 of the Juvenile Justice Act bars joint proceedings of a child in conflict with law and an adult, so the law required separate trials and separate judgments.
The judicial officer decided both on 20 January 2024. She convicted both accused of the charges found proved and sentenced each to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment.
It seems, the Supreme Court recorded, that some overlapping extracts of evidence and numerical details from the record of one trial were inadvertently carried into the judgment in the other.
What the Single Judge wrote
The convicted child appealed to the Rajasthan High Court and asked for suspension of sentence. On 1 May 2025 the Single Judge rejected the suspension plea after discussing the merits. The same order also turned to the trial judge.
The order noted that she had passed two judgments on one day from the same FIR, and that the adult accused’s trial had run differently, with 17 witnesses, 30 documents and a defence witness. It held that she had used the methodology of cut, copy and paste, so the judgment was in fact written by the stenographer or clerk.
She had not read and corrected it, the order said, so irrelevant paragraphs on the adult accused’s trial were not struck out. It added that she was busy with other irrelevant work and had left judgment writing to the stenographer or personal assistant.
In the next paragraph the Single Judge called the position alarming. A judge who does not dictate the whole judgment, the order said, is shirking responsibility and is not entitled to remain in judicial service.
The order directed that a copy go to the judge in charge of the Rajasthan Judicial Academy, for training in judgment writing. It also directed the Registrar General to make a copy part of her annual confidential report for 2024, after obtaining her comments.
The adverse observations were in paragraphs 8 to 11 of the order, and the directions in paragraphs 17 and 18.
Her explanation in the Supreme Court
The officer appealed by special leave, seeking expungement of the remarks. She told the Supreme Court that the facts of the two cases were intricately intermingled, since the witnesses and the substantive evidence were almost the same.
She said special courts under the POCSO Act have limited resources and the Act requires time-bound disposal. The sole stenographer of her court had gone on leave, so she dictated part of the judgment directly to a Lower Division Clerk on the computer and dictated the larger remaining part to the stenographer on his return.
The errors, including incorrect serial numbers of prosecution witnesses, were bona fide typographical errors, she said. They neither changed nor affected the outcome or substance of the judgment.
No show-cause, no strictures
The bench’s first finding was procedural. The remarks, it said, were “uncalled for and avoidable” (para 16), and they were recorded on the judicial side without giving the officer a chance to show cause or place her explanation on record. That, the Court held, violates the principles of natural justice.
It said that even if the High Court thought an error had occurred, it ought not to have recorded adverse observations without first affording her an opportunity to explain. The course taken was contrary to audi alteram partem.
High Court as guardian of district judges
The bench recalled that Article 227 gives High Courts supervisory jurisdiction over the courts below, and said that the power must be exercised in a manner that guides, strengthens and nurtures the district judiciary. In this case, it said, the High Court should have acted with “greater magnanimity” (para 20).
To castigate a judicial officer for inadvertent typographical errors that did not affect the outcome was avoidable. The bench said it could not subscribe to the view that she had been in dereliction of duty in rendering the 20 January 2024 judgment.
Adverse remarks of this kind, it warned, can destroy a judicial officer’s career and have a “chilling effect on the entire district judiciary” (para 23).
The precedents the bench followed
The Court relied on its own decision in Kaushal Singh v. State of Rajasthan, 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1473. That judgment reiterated that High Courts should ordinarily refrain from strictures against judicial officers when deciding matters on the judicial side.
Kaushal Singh in turn drew on In Re: K, A Judicial Officer, (2001) 3 SCC 54, and Sonu Agnihotri v. Chandra Shekhar, 2024 SCC OnLine SC 3382. Those cases separate criticism of an erroneous judicial order from adverse comment on the officer’s personal conduct or calibre.
Concerns about conduct, the Court said, can go to the Chief Justice on the administrative side, where the officer has an opportunity to explain. In Kaushal Singh it had expunged strictures recorded without notice.
The bench also recalled Shuvendu Saha v. State of West Bengal, 2026 INSC 367. Where a situation warrants it, observations on the merits or quality of a presiding officer’s judgment should go into a remark slip placed before the administrative judge or the Chief Justice for follow-up on the administrative side.
Condemning an officer on the judicial side, the bench said, leads to adverse consequences for her career. Action taken without following natural justice is unsustainable in law.
Order
Leave was granted and the appeal was allowed. The Court expunged and set aside the strictures and adverse remarks in paragraphs 9, 10 and 11 of the High Court order of 1 May 2025, and the directions in paragraphs 17 and 18 on training and the entry in her ACR.
The Registry was directed to send a copy of the Supreme Court judgment to the Registrar General of the Rajasthan High Court, to be placed before the Chief Justice. Pending applications were disposed of.