The Supreme Court sent Calcutta high court judge Chinnaswamy Swaminathan Karnan to six months in prison on charges of contempt on Tuesday, biting the bullet in an unprecedented months-long face-off in the upper judiciary.

This is the first time a sitting judge of a high court will be arrested and put behind bars. Karnan retires next month.

The court asked West Bengal’s police chief to arrest justice Karnan immediately. But sources said Karnan travelled from Kolkata to Chennai on Monday night.

The top court also ordered the media to keep away from reporting anything on justice Karnan.

DGP, West Bengal to arrest Just Karnan today @

— bhadra sinha (@BhadraSinha) May 9, 2017

Karnan’s arrest orders came a day after he sentenced Chief Justice of India J S Khehar and six other judges of the Supreme Court to five years in jail under the SC /ST Act.

The SC called this order the “gravest form of contempt” and Karnan’s offence as “grave and serious”.

The controversy began in January when Karnan wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order an investigation against judges of the Madras high court and the apex court of corruption.

On February 8, the Supreme Court found him in contempt, a first for a high court judge in the country. He was asked for an explanation but he repeatedly ignored the orders of the court. On March 10, the court issued a bailable warrant and took away judicial work from him.

He rejected the warrant and accused his colleagues and seniors of caste bias, saying he was being singled out for being a Dalit.

This was followed by a string of tit-for-tat orders by the top court and Karnan, who remained defiant and continued to address the press and issuing diktats from his Kolkata home.

Earlier this month, the SC ordered Karnan to appear before a medical board for a mental health evaluation but the 61-year-old judge refused to comply.

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