Attempt to privately contact Judge in pending case is Criminal Contempt: HC

The Madhya Pradesh High Court's Jabalpur Bench has directed its Registry to register a suo motu criminal contempt petition against one Sanjay Satyendra Pathak after a sitting judge flagged that Pathak had attempted to contact him privately to discuss a live case pending before his court, a brazen act that forced the judge to recuse himself and has now triggered the full weight of contempt jurisdiction against the accused.

The trouble traces back to Writ Petition, in which members of the Pathak family, including Nirmala Pathak and Yash Pathak of Katni, Madhya Pradesh, were interveners. While that petition was actively pending, the presiding judge recorded in his order dated September 1, 2025, that Sanjay Satyendra Pathak had made an attempt to call him for a private discussion concerning that very matter.

The judge made his position unambiguous, he refused to entertain the contact, recused himself from the case, and directed that the matter be placed before the Chief Justice for reassignment. That judicial note of September 2025 became the cornerstone of the present petition, which sought formal cognizance of what petitioners characterised as a calculated attempt to improperly influence the court's adjudication.

Examining the conduct against the framework of Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, which defines criminal contempt to include any act that interferes with or tends to interfere with the due course of judicial proceedings, the Bench found the facts prima facie damning. The judge's own recorded words left little interpretive room: "Mr. Sanjay Pathak has, regarding this particular writ petition, made an attempt to call me to have discussion, I am not inclined to entertain this matter." 

Finding that the conduct prima facie crossed the threshold into criminal contempt territory, the Court disposed of the petition with a sharp direction, the Registry was ordered to register a suo motu Criminal Contempt Petition against Sanjay Satyendra Pathak, with the matter listed for hearing on April 6, 2026.

Case Title: Ashutosh Dixit Vs. The State ff Madhya Pradesh and Ors.

Case No.: Writ Petition No. 4699 of 2026

Coram: Hon'ble Mr. Chief Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, Hon'ble Mr. Justice Vinay Saraf

Advocate for the Petitioner: Adv. Arvind Kumar Shrivastava, Adv. Puneet Shroti

Advocate for the Respondent: Government Adv. Anubhav Jain, Adv. Akash Chaudhary, Adv. Anil Khare

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