Delhi High Court: A Single Judge Bench of Jyoti Singh, J. initiated criminal contempt proceedings against one Vicky Aggarwal after it was revealed through the Registrar (Vigilance) inquiry, that he placed fabricated IPAB’s Order on record as a part of the compilation of the documents.
Background
In the present case, during the arguments, a compilation of documents was handed over to the Court on behalf of the defendants. In 2016, an order was passed by the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB), wherein it was stated that the documents material to the suit had been deliberately concealed by the plaintiff, therefore, disentitling the plaintiff to an interim injunction. Moreover, it was an admitted position obtained between the parties that the compilation of documents was filed by the Defendants and the documents were made part of the Court record.
Submissions on behalf of the Plaintiff
It was submitted that there was no concealment as the documents were neither material nor adverse to the plaintiff, thus, the plaintiff had no reason to conceal them. Counsel for the plaintiff submitted that the Order of the IPAB was a fabricated document as there was no record of the order or any proceedings relating thereto existed before the erstwhile IPAB and the plaintiff was neither privy to any such proceeding before the IPAB nor had any knowledge about it, hence, the question of the plaintiff’s participation in the proceedings did not arose. Therefore, it was submitted that the matter required investigation as filing forged and fabricated documents in a Court was a serious matter.
Analysis, Law, and Decision
The Court opined that as per the Report given by the Registrar (Vigilance), it could be concluded that there was no record of IPAB’s Order available and no file to this extent existed. The Report concluded that the Order, which was allegedly passed, was not a genuine and authentic order.
The Court noted that Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 (Act) defined ‘criminal contempt’ to mean inter alia “publication, (whether by words, spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representations, or otherwise) of any matter or doing of any other act whatsoever which prejudices, or interferes or tends to interfere with, the due course of any judicial proceedings or interferes or tends to interfere with, or obstructs or tends to obstruct, the administration of justice in any manner”.
The Court relied on Chandra Shashi v. Anil Kumar Verma, (1995) 1 SCC 421 and Ram Autar Shukla v. Arvind Shukla, 1995 Supp (2) SCC 130, and held that “tendency to obstruct due course of justice or undermine the dignity of the Court needs to be curbed to deter persons having similar proclivity to resort to such acts or conduct. In an appropriate case, mens rea may not be clear or may be obscure but if the act or conduct tends to undermine the dignity of the Court or prejudice the party or impedes or hinders due course of judicial proceedings or administration of justice, it would amount to contempt of court”.
Therefore, the Court opined that the conduct of the defendants was an attempt to interfere and obstruct the judicial proceedings and administration of justice, constituting criminal contempt, as defined under Section 2(C)(ii) and (iii) of the Act. The Court, in view of Section 18 of the Act, further held that the present case should be placed before the Chief Justice for reference to the appropriate Division Bench.
The matter would next be listed on 23-12-2022.
[AB Mauri India (P) Ltd. v. Vicky Aggarwal, 2022 SCC OnLine Del 4519, decided on 14-12-2022]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For the Plaintiff: Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra, Senior Advocate Chander M. Lall, Advocate Philip Abraham, Advocate Sanuj Das, Advocate Geetika Vyas, Advocate Ananya Chug, Advocate Akshat Kumar, Advocate Asif Ahmed, Advocate Kushagra Raghuvanshi, Advocate Karanvir Virgogia;
For the Respondent: Senior Advocate Amit Sibal, Advocate Prashant Mehta, Advocate Prachi Mehta, Advocate Raghav Marwaha, Advocate Vidit Gupta, Advocate Chetan Singh.