Contempt of Courts Act, 1971: Section 3 Contempt of Court-Suo moto notice-Issuance of Statement of facts appearing in Press report Proof of Necessity for.

The petitioner/applicant, a DIG of Police of the appellant-State, filed a contempt petition before this Court requesting to initiate suo moto proceeding for criminal contempt allegedly committed by the respondent/contemner, and to issue notice for the same and punish him adequately. He also filed two Interlocutory applications praying for awarding adequate punishment to the respondent for committing aggravated contempt of the Authority of this Court by seeking to punish the petitioner (applicant) for assisting the Court through the advocates appearing for the State and setting aside the order of suspension of the petitioner/applicant and also for fixing an early date of hearing of the contempt application and the application for direction filed by the applicant earlier.

The applicant stated that the respondent in order to create a bias in his favour and prejudice that he was innocent of the charge of amassing wealth by illegal and corrupt means, had issued public statements so that this Court did not take the serious charges of corruption against him F seriously, and issued a statement touching upon the proceedings pending before this Court, which amounted to gross criminal contempt of the Court.

On behalf of the State, it was contended that the petition was not maintainable for the reasons: (1) the petitioner was neither the investigating officer in the case registered against the respondent nor he was a party to that criminal proceedings; (2) that the statement attributed to the respondent could not be said to have interfered with the proceedings, then pending before this Court, since on that day the First Information Report had already been quashed by the High Court and there was no stay of the order of the High Court passed by this Court; (3) that in any case, there was no material on record apart from the newspaper report to show that this statement was made by the respondent; (4) that the petitioner was not competent to file this contempt petition because be was not a party to the proceedings.

On behalf of the respondent the very maintainability of the petition by the applicant was questioned on the ground that the press statement without proof of the contents found therein was inadmissible in law. It was contended that the statement of fact contained in a newspaper report was merely here say and, therefore inadmissible in evidence in the absence of proof by evidence aliunde, that there was no proof that the alleged contemptuous statement was in fact made by the Chief Minister, as it appeared in the Press note, that it was only for the applicant to satisfy the court by adducing acceptable evidence that the statement of fact contained in the report was true and that it called for issued of suo moto notice.

Dismissing the Contempt Petition and the Interlocutory Applications, this Court.