CHENNAI: In an embarrassing first for the 156-year-old Madras high court , a CBI probe has been ordered after a former judge of the court, T Mathivanan, failed to return at least 100 case bundles after his retirement in May 2017. In several cases where the judge 'delivered' an oral order in open court, actual orders were neither delivered nor made available to the litigants. The bundles, too, were not to be found in the high court office.The case bundles disappeared like (shipping) vessels going missing at Bermuda Triangle , remarked Justice G Jayachandran on Wednesday, adding that since an an in-house investigation ordered by Chief Justice Indira Banerjee failed to bring back the bundles, the court was constrained to order a CBI investigation."It is submitted across the Bar that there are several such cases where the former judge reserved the orders, or pronounced the orders in the open court, but the order copies had not seen the light of the day," the judge said.‘Court is worried about the missing of case records’Justice Jayachandran said, “Inquiries with the registry reveal that about 100 bundles in which the judge had reserved orders are missing and the Chief Justice has ordered the registrar (vigilance) to make inquiries and trace the bundles missing from the residence of Justice T Mathivanan, since retired.”“It is alarming to note that case bundles, 100 in numbers, disappearing from the radar, like vessels going missing in Bermuda Triangle. Therefore, this court is constrained to direct the CBI to take up the information for investigation,” Justice Jayachandran said and directed joint director of CBI, Chennai zone, to take necessary action.Pointing out that records have been reconstructed as per the direction of the chief justice, the bench said the court was worried about the missing of case records from the chartered high court which is also the ‘court of records’. “Reconstruction of the missing records may be the solution on the administrative side but the fact that 100 case bundles not returned from the residence of the retired judge cannot be ignored. It appears that despite inhouse investigation ordered by the chief justice, till date case records sent to the judge’s records have not been retrieved.”“Today (July 18), in the cause list, two criminal appeals, six criminal original petitions and two criminal revision cases were listed under the caption ‘matters relating to reconstruction’, in all these cases CBI is the prosecuting agency.The matter came to light after counsel for one of the 100 aggrieved petitioner said his ‘criminal original petition came up for admission on March 21, 2017 and Justice Mathivanan pronounced an order allowing the petition, in the open court. However, the petitioner was not able to get the order copy despite payment of necessary charges. Counsel also submitted that he had given a letter to the registrar (judicial), on September 26, 2017 informing that the judge who had passed the order demitted office in May 2017. However, till date he was not able to get the order copy. The status of this case is shown as disposed of on March 21, 2017 by Justice

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