Let truth speak

Offcourt...

The conviction of scribes by the Delhi high court for committing contempt by accusing former chief justice of India (CJI) YK Sabharwal is a test case to judge the efficacy of the recently-amended contempt of court Act providing truth as defence for suspected violators.

The supreme court (SC) is already seized of a strong media organisation’s appeal against a sentence awarded by the Punjab and Haryana high court under the same law. Contemnors have pleaded innocence and invoked the public interest clause, besides bona fide action in these cases.

The Punjab story was based on intelligence reports damning a judge before he was conferred the high constitutional position. There was no dispute on the veracity of the material, but the HC found a rat with the timing of the story because it came in print much after the appointment of the judge concerned.

The media house said there was no malice in it, for the expose hit the headlines amidst country-wide uproar over corruption in judiciary and a judge having been arrested in a land scam.

Truth wasn’t a defence when the SC initiated contempt proceedings against Shiv Sena chief Balasaheb Thackeray in a case that ended in a ruling that “Hindutva is a way of life”. During the ongoing hearings, Thackeray wrote an article in Saamna reiterating his views on Muslims and the court. Judges said he had interfered with the “administration of justice”. Thackeray refused to apologise saying he had written the truth. His lawyer sought protection of the truth clause.

“Are you invoking the truth clause as defence,” the judges asked, forcing the lawyer to withdraw his argument. The judges gave weight to the truth clause then, sometime in the 90s. They said so long as the law wasn’t amended, they could not accept truth as defence.

The possibility of the SC testing the amended contempt of court clause can’t be ruled out in the days to come. After all the court has been emphasising that judicial review is the last resort for redressal and interpretation of law.

It wouldn’t be out to place to cite Sabharwal’s judgment quashing a sentence awarded by the Madhya Pradesh high court to some scribes. “The confidence of people in the institute of judiciary is necessary to be preserved at any cost.

That is its main asset. Loss of confidence in the institution of judiciary would be end of rule of law,” he said. He was dealing with allegations of attributing motive against judges who had delivered a particular judgment.

But the media, the fourth pillar of democracy, have been looked up to by the same people for cleansing the judiciary loaded with over 3 crore cases and increasing by the day. Who else but these consumers of justice have sordid tales to tell about judicial corruption?