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Contempt of court only arises on disobedience
of order: Apex court
Saturday, October 16, 2010 08:39:32 AM,
IANS
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New Delhi:
The Supreme Court has held that the proceedings against a person
accused of contempt of court could not be initiated merely on
speculation, assumptions and inference drawn from the fact and
circumstances of the case, but only on "wilful disobedience" of
the court's order.
"In our considered opinion", the apex court bench of Justice J.M.
Panchal and Justice Gyan Sudha Mishra said the "contempt of a
civil nature can be held to have been made out only if there has
been a wilful disobedience of the (court) order...."
Speaking for the bench, Justice Mishra said that even though there
may be disobedience, "yet if the same does not reflect that it has
been a conscious and wilful disobedience, a case for contempt
cannot be held to have been made out". The judgment was made
available Friday.
"In fact, if an order is capable of more than one interpretation
giving rise to variety of consequences, non-compliance of the same
cannot be held to be wilful disobedience of the order so as to
make out a case of contempt entailing the serious consequence
including imposition of punishment," the judgment said.
However, when the courts are confronted with a question as to
whether a given situation could be treated to be a case of wilful
disobedience or a case of a lame excuse in order to subvert its
compliance, it would depend on the facts and circumstances of the
individual cases.
The Contempt of Court Act, 1971 clearly postulates and emphasises
that the ingredients of the wilful disobedience must be there
before any one can hauled for the charge of contempt of a civil
nature, the apex court said, setting aside the initiation of
contempt proceedings by the single judge of the Jaipur bench of
Rajasthan High Court against its Deputy Registrar (Judicial)
Dinesh Kumar Gupta.
The high court initiated the contempt proceedings on the
assumption that Gupta sat over the case file where in an inquiry
was ordered against the judge of a Motor Accident Claims Tribunal,
at Jaipur.
This tribunal, presided over by S.K. Bansal, had awarded
compensation to Kaushalya Devi and others from the United India
Insurance in 2001. When the matter came up for hearing before the
high court in 2006, Bansal had already retired.
Setting aside the high court order directing the initiation of
contempt proceedings against Gupta, the judgment said that the
high court judge had "inferred and assumed erroneously that the
appellant (Gupta) had the intention of obstructing the
administration of justice".
Gupta could not attract the charge of shielding Bansal, who had
retired in 2003, as he only took over deputy registrar in 2005,
the apex court judgment said, adding initiation of the contempt
proceeding against Gupta "is based on a wholly wrong premise based
on unsustainable and unfounded facts which cannot be treated
sufficient material so as to initiate contempt proceeding...."
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