Recently, the Supreme Court has said that judges should not hear any case unless it is specifically assigned by the Chief Justice.

''Judges will have to follow discipline.'' The top court made this comment during the hearing on the appeal against a May order of the Rajasthan High Court.

The bench comprising, Justice Abhay S. A , Justice Oka and Justice Pankaj Mittal said that hearing the case without handing it over by the Chief Justice is a gross impropriety. The bench took cognizance of the fact that three persons had earlier approached the High Court to get the FIR quashed, but they had not got any relief.

After this, he filed a separate writ petition from the civil side to merge all the eight FIRs into one. Appellant Ambalal Parihar, who had filed six FIRs against the trio, claimed in the top court that the new method of filing the civil writ petition was adopted to avoid the roster judge who had not granted the interim relief. The Supreme Court said, 'This is a classic example of forum hunting (the method of taking the case before the judge of choice) by the second to fourth defendants.

This is a case of gross abuse of legal process. The bench also took cognizance of the fact that there was a separate roster for criminal writ petitions. “Since a civil writ petition was filed, the judge should have converted it into a criminal writ petition so that it could be presented before the roster judge hearing criminal writ petitions,” the bench said in its October 16 order.

The apex court said, 'We direct the Registrar (Judicial) of the Rajasthan High Court to submit a copy of this order in all the eight petitions filed under Section 482 of CrPC for quashing of the FIR by the second to fourth respondents. '