MUMBAI: Officers of the court including lawyers and petitioners attending the Bombay High Court bench at Nagpur were left shocked when Justice Rohit Baban Deo announced his resignation in an open court while it was in session. 

According to those who were present in the court, Justice Deo began by addressing those who were present and apologised to each one of them and then said, "I am sorry to tell you that I have submitted my resignation. I can't work against my self-respect." He was to retie on 4 December 2025. 

He also said, "I scolded you because I want you to improve. I don't want to hurt anyone of you because you all are like family to me." Later he told reporters that he had resigned due to personal reasons and had sent his resignation to the president.

Deo had presided over several important cases in his career at the HC. Last week, on 26 July, he had stayed the January 3, operation of a Maharashtra government resolution (GR) finding significant substance against it, as it empowered the state to cancel punitive proceedings initiated by the revenue department engaged in the illegal excavation of minor minerals by contractors engaged in the construction of the Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway.

In October 2023, Justice Deo led a two-judge bench which acquitted sacked Delhi University Professor G N Saibaba, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 over alleged Maoist links. 

The bench had noted that while the war against terror must be waged by the state with unwavering resolve and every legitimate weapon in the armoury must be deployed in the fight against terror, civil democratic society can ill afford to sacrifice the procedural safeguards legislatively provided.

Citing the absence of valid sanction under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and declaring the trial proceedings in a Gadchiroli court 'null and void' the Nagpur bench also acquitted five others sentenced by the lower court.

However, before they could be released, the Supreme Court held a special sitting and suspended the Bombay high court order and sent the case back to the HC to decide it afresh.

Justice Deo was a law graduate securing 2nd Order Of Merit from Nagpur University, a gold medalist of 1986 and had been an assistant Solicitor General representing the Central government at the Nagpur bench, later becoming Advocate General of Maharashtra. He was elevated as an additional judge of the High Court of Bombay in June 2017 and was made a permanent judge in April 2019.