The allegations against Chandrashekhar pertained to another corruption case which was pending before a Special Judge in Delhi. He was in custody in that case in April 2017 (File)A Delhi court last week convicted conman Sukesh Chandrasekhar for impersonating a sitting Supreme Court judge in his attempt to pressure another judge to grant him bail in a corruption case.“He operated under the dangerous belief that if a lie is only grand enough and uttered with sufficient audacity, the rule of law will simply bow its head and step aside. He forgot that impersonating a bureaucrat or a political broker is a transactional crime born of greed, but impersonating a Supreme Court judge or his secretary is an act of institutional defiance,” said Chief Judicial Magistrate Harshita Mishra in her judgment dated August 20.The quantum of sentence will be pronounced on August 27.“He assumed the judiciary would respond with the same quiet compliance as his other corporate targets. What Sukesh failed to calculate in his risk assessment is that the judiciary does not negotiate its authority with shadow callers. In attempting to flex non-existent judicial muscles from behind a phone screen, he overplayed his hand so completely that he collapsed his own house of cards,” she added while convicting him under Sections 170 (personating a public servant), 189 (threat of injury to a public servant) and 507 (criminal intimidation through anonymous communication) of the Indian Penal Code.The allegations against Chandrashekhar pertained to another corruption case which was pending before a Special Judge in Delhi. He was in custody in that case in April 2017. As per the Delhi Police, the conman obtained access to the mobile phone of Constable Manjeet and called the judge who was hearing his corruption case and introduced himself as the personal secretary to a Supreme Court judge.Another person then allegedly came on the line and claimed to be the SC judge, stating that he was calling on behalf of the Union Home Ministry. The caller directed the Special Judge to release Chandrasekhar on interim bail immediately and threatened her with repercussions if she didn’t do so.The Special Judge reached out to the Supreme Court and spoke to the actual private secretary of the SC Judge being impersonated. She was then informed that no such call had been made by the judge’s office.“There is an old adage that a con man’s deadliest enemy is not the police, but his own untamed ego. Having spent a career spoofing caller IDs, impersonating Union Ministers, and convincing gullible millionaires that he held the keys to the corridors of power, accused Sukesh appears to have fallen victim to his own propaganda,” it added.Story continues below this adThe court also strongly criticised the Delhi Police investigation in the case, describing it as “superficial, shoddy and marked by apathy”.“The investigating officers have reduced the investigation to the recording of a few statements (that too after the passage of 8-10 months), collection of readily available documents, and examination of the immediate telephone trail. The IOs didn’t even record the statement of the complainant under Section 161 CrPC, which is usually done in all criminal cases. They didn’t even examine the staff members posted with the Ld Judicial Officer on the day when the calls in question were received,” the court said.It also gave directions to the Commissioner of Police to consider “issuing suitable directions, developing training modules, issuing internal advisories or investigative protocols for preservation of electronic evidence, tracing of mobile devices, examination of relevant witnesses with promptitude, securing of CCTV footage and proper documentation of the movement and custody of material objects”.The court also directed the Commissioner to re-examine the role of Constable Manjeet in the case.Story continues below this ad“…how did accused Sukesh obtain physical access to the mobile phone of Constable Manjeet? The prosecution case cannot logically end with the proposition that the accused somehow acquired access to a police official’s smartphone and thereafter used it… That silence assumes significance not because silence, by itself, establishes guilt, but because it is a circumstance which demanded investigation,” the court said.