The case of the detained executive of Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation has reached the Supreme Court (SC) but the issue raised was not on the merits involving the legality or illegality of his detention.

In a complaint-affidavit, Pharmally’s Mohit Dargani pleaded the SC to discipline Court of Appeals (CA) Associate Justice Apolinario D. Bruselas Jr. for alleged undue delay in the resolution of the petition for a writ of habeas corpus he (Dargani) filed with the appellate court on Nov. 19, 2021.

“The continued inaction of the Respondent Justice (Bruselas), as the presiding Justice and ponente of the case, shows that he has decided to shirk on his duty as a magistrate and to turn a blind eye to the plight of a person whose constitutional rights have been gravely violated,” Dargani told the SC.

A writ of habeas corpus is a petition filed to compel a person detaining another to produce the body of the detained person at a designated time and place. The writ extends to cases of illegal or arbitrary detention.

Dargani has been detained at the Pasay City jail since November 2021 on orders issued by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee which was then conducting a probe into the government deals with Pharmally for medical supplies for the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said that he and his sister, Twinkle, were ordered detained. But the CA, in a resolution issued last March 1 by the division chaired by Bruselas, ruled that the petition of his sister has become moot and academic due to her release from detention on Jan. 11, 2022.

Since his case was not tackled in the March 1 resolution, he filed several motions for reconsideration and to resolve his petition.

Dargani told the SC that Bruselas’ inaction on his petition, which is an urgent case involving his liberty, is a violation of Section 5 of Canon 6 of the Code of Judicial Conduct.

“The Respondent Justice is guilty of undue delay in the disposition of the Petition for habeas corpus filed by the Complainant back in 19 November 2021. In fact, the Petition should have been deemed submitted for resolution as early as 12 December 2021, after the lapse of the ten-day period given to the respondents in the Petition to comment thereto or explain their side,” he said.

He also said: “In fact, Complainant already filed a Motion for Inhibition for the Honorable Division members to disqualify themselves in the Petition due to their undue delay in the resolution of a supposed expeditious way to protect a person who has been deprived of his liberty under Section 1, Rule 137 of the Revised Rules of Court.”

He pointed out that “the writ is the only remedy available to petitioner Mohit Dargani who has been arbitrarily and indefinitely detained by the Senate for almost five months now, without any criminal charges filed in court against him.”

“Sadly, despite the foregoing clear invocation of an immediately demandable constitutional right, the Respondent Justice continuously refused to act and perform his judicial duty to immediately rule on the petition,” he lamented.

He then cited a 2018 SC ruling in an administrative case: “Any delay in the administration of justice, no matter how brief, deprives the litigant of his right to a speedy disposition of his case. It undermines the people’s faith and confidence in the judiciary, lowers its standards, and brings it to disrepute.”

He asked the SC to impose “appropriate administrative sanctions against Bruselas” for allegedly making himself “complicit with the Senate in depriving the complainant of his liberty without due process of law.”

At 5 p.m. on Thursday, efforts to contact Associate Justice Bruselas proved futile.