A group of progressive thinkers have taken a view that there is lot of corruption in judiciary.
Some instances are as brazen as Sun in the sky.
It is duty of citizens to expose such corruption and therefore, truth should be considered a valid defence when any person is accused under Contempt of Court Act. This is one view.
The other view is conservative.
They say, whether there be any law or not, every judge has, since 500 years, unfettered powers to punish any man who insults a judge, ridicules him in public, and puts pressure on his mind, in such a way, that the judge cannot decide cases fearlessly.
POINT :
All languages and human actions are ambiguous. Any one word can have two meanings or more. Therefore, these words have to be looked from angle of context in which it is said.
It is true that a corrupt judge needs to be checked. But to put him at mercy of a person who has habit of insulting judges, is even worse.
In contempt case, the judge who has been insulted, does not decide this case.
He has to transfer the case to other two judge bench, who can decide impartially whether the accused had any intention to insult the judge or not and whether the act complained of contains words that amount to insult of judge?
What if the words spoken are written are actually 100%,truth?
Here, I give TWO imaginary examples
1) A newspaper published report that 50% members of a municipality are corrupt.
The Municipal Board issued notice asking Newspaper to apologise or to face contempt proceedings.
Next day, the Newspaper published an apology and published a correction saying that "50% members of Municipal Board are NOT CORRUPT".
Here, regardless of apology, the intention of newspaper was to commit contempt and to insult members of Municipal Board.
2) Another example :- A son comes home and says to his mother, "Hi, my dad's fat wife!"
Here, even if the statement is true, the son has committed contempt of his parents.
Truth alone here, is not a valid defence.
Both above, imaginary illustrations make it clear that it is the CONTEXT which determines what is CONTEMPT.
And not TRUTH alone.
Haresh Raichura
1235
