India, Aug. 6 -- The Supreme Court has directed that an Allahabad High Court judge be stripped of all criminal jurisdiction until his retirement and made to sit with a seasoned senior judge to understand the nuances of law, after finding his recent ruling to be one of the "worst and most erroneous" orders encountered by the top court.

The unusual direction, issued by a bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan, came in a criminal matter where the high court judge, Justice Prashant Kumar, dismissed a plea seeking quashing of a criminal case based on what the apex court termed as a purely civil dispute.

"We are constrained to observe that the impugned order is one of the worst and most erroneous orders that we have come across in our...