Supreme Court judge Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri retired on Wednesday, 6 March, after a career of more than four decades in the legal domain.
The second senior-most SC judge broke down during a farewell being given to him by lawyers, including Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, SC Bar Association President Rakesh Khanna and advocate Maninder Singh, News18 reported.
The judge, who turns 65 on Thursday, 7 March, was elevated to the apex court on 12 April 2013. Prior to this, he had served as the chief justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court, and the acting chief justice of the Delhi High Court. He was first appointed as a judge in 1999 with the Delhi HC.
Justice Sikri was recently in the news for being a part of the High Powered Selection Committee that removed Alok Verma as the CBI director after being reinstated to the post by the Supreme Court. Justice Sikri's vote had swung the committee's decision, leading to Verma's ouster on 8 January.
The committee saw voting from PM Modi, Justice Sikri and Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge. While PM Modi and Sikri stamped on Verma’s removal from the post, Kharge presented a strong dissent note.
Justice Sikri was expected to join the Commonwealth Secretariat Arbitral Tribunal (CSAT) after his retirement. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government, in December 2018, had purportedly decided to nominate Sikri to the vacant post of president/member in the London-based CSAT.
However, The Indian Express reported that Sikri had written to the Ministry of Law and Justice on 13 January to formally turn down the Centre’s offer.
On Tuesday, 5 March, a three-judge bench led by Justice Sikri acquitted six death-row convicts after it re-visited the court's 10-year-old decision in a case of murder of five persons, and rape of a woman and her daughter. The bench held that the jailed men were wrongly implicated.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)