NEW DELHI (TIP): The father-son duo of Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan on April 10 made a high-voltage corruption charge against a former Supreme Court judge and his advocate son while repeatedly pleading with the SC to order registration of an FIR.

The petition was filed by Prashant Bhushan through advocate Kamini Jaiswal. Arguing for his petitioner son, Shanti Bhushan alleged the ex-judge had indulged in corruption while deciding a case during his stint in the apex court.

Bhushan senior followed the charge with his favourite doomsday argument, “Unless an FIR is registered against the ex-judge and a thorough inquiry is conducted, the credibility of the Supreme Court as an institution will be endangered.” Citing the apex court’s Lalitha Kumari judgment, Bhushan said the SC had ruled that registration of FIR was mandatory in a complaint disclosing a cognizable offence. “If that is the judgment, an FIR should be registered on the basis of the complaint filed by Prashant Bhushan on December 1, 2014,” he said.A bench of justices Dipak Misra and PC Pant pointed out that the Bhushans were not a party to the case which was decided by the ex-judge. “In our opinion, the person who is aggrieved by any kind of order passed by the ex-judge in the discharge of his judicial duty while functioning as a judge of this court in dealing with a matter on the judicial side can file an application for review or take recourse to curative petition or any other remedy available to him in law,” it said. But the petitioners cannot be allowed to make such a prayer invoking the conceptual facet of public interest litigation under Article 32 of the Constitution of India. We are absolutely convinced that the view expressed by the constitution bench in Lalitha Kumari is not applicable to the facts of the case,” it added.