Madhya Pradesh High Court | While criticising most reprehensible practice used by litigants of bringing every wrong order that is passed by the Trial Courts under the petition for contempt, a Division Bench comprising of Ravi Malimath*, CJ and Vishal Mishra, J., strongly pulled up litigants for making reckless allegations against trial judges and warned them to desist from such ‘adventurism’.
The petitioners filed a contempt petition against the respondent, Shri Tej Pratap Singh, Chief Judicial Magistrate Seoni, District Seoni (M.P.) for willfully disobeying the order dated 09.07.2022 passed in Majid Beg v. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2022 SCC OnLine MP 1769.
According to the petitioners, the trial judge proceeded to recall the witnesses and record their evidence, even though petitioners brought it to the notice of the trial judge that there was an order to restrain him not to summon the witnesses by the High Court
The Court observed that there was no specific order directing the trial court not to summon the witnesses passed by the High Court, therefore, there was no disobedience, hence, no contempt the High Court directed the Trial Court to decide the matter ‘afresh’ after giving an opportunity of hearing to the petitioners/accused etc.
Deprecating the practice of threatening trial court judges with contempt petitions for wrong judicial orders by the litigants, the Court opined that “One has to show that the disobedience is willful to the orders passed by the superior courts. If there is any scope for any interpretation in the directions being issued then that cannot constitute a contempt.”
The Court observed that petitioners conduct of putting ‘reckless allegations’ against the trial judge is nothing but pure ‘adventurism’ and stated that “we deprecate such attitude. We do not appreciate that every wrong order passed by the trial court is to be brought under contempt and the concerned judge has to be proceeded against.”
The Court warned the litigants against threatening the judges with petitions for contempt. Since the matter arising for the first occasion, the Court restrained itself and only directed a warning to the petitioners to desist from such adventurism in future.
[Majid Beg v. Tej Pratap Singh, 2022 SCC OnLine MP 2811, decided on 20-09-2022]
Advocate who appeared in this case :
Mr Vishal Vincent Rajendra Daniel, Counsel for the Petitioners.
*Ritu Singh, Editorial Assistant has put this report together.