The Supreme Court on Monday, November 2, refused to interfere with a Delhi High Court order declining to stay the conviction and sentence of Sukesh Chandrashekhar for impersonating a Supreme Court judge and attempting to pressurise a judicial officer to grant him bail, LiveLaw and India Legal reported.

Source: LiveLaw

A Bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Manmohan dismissed the plea, holding: "Having heard the learned counsel for the petitioner and having gone through the materials on record, there is no error, not to speak of any error of law, committed by the High Court by passing the impugned order." The Bench clarified that all other trials against Chandrashekhar should proceed on their own merit in accordance with law.

Source: India Legal

An eight-year sentence, to run consecutively

Chandrashekhar was convicted on August 20, 2026, under Sections 170 (personating a public servant), 189 (threat of injury to a public servant) and 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication) of the Indian Penal Code. On August 29 he was sentenced to a total of eight years' imprisonment — two years of rigorous imprisonment each under Sections 170 and 189 and four years under Section 507 — with the substantive sentences directed to run consecutively, Law Trend reported.

Source: Law Trend

The case relates to a phone call on April 28, 2017, when Chandrashekhar was in police custody in a corruption case. According to the prosecution, he obtained access to the mobile phone of the constable in whose custody he was, and used it to contact Poonam Chaudhary, the then Special Judge hearing his corruption case under the Prevention of Corruption Act — first impersonating the private secretary of a sitting Supreme Court judge and then the judge himself.

Senior Advocate Shoeb Alam, appearing for Chandrashekhar, argued that the trial court had made strong observations about his character while referring to 31 pending criminal cases, even though he has not been convicted in those cases, and that the observations could prejudice the other trials. The Delhi High Court, in its October 16 order, had declined the stay and said those objections must be examined by the court hearing his appeal, not at this stage. His criminal appeal remains pending before the appellate court.

With Monday's dismissal, the conviction and sentence stay in force while the appeal is heard. The Supreme Court did not decide the appeal itself, and the allegations and findings in Chandrashekhar's other pending cases remain for those courts to decide.