The Madras High Court while acting stringently, send a Contemnor to one month jail noting that he deserves no mercy for misleading the Court.
The Division Bench of Justice PN Prakash and Justice AA Nakkiran observed that the contemnor appears to be an interloper who has been using the judicial process for blackmailing and causing annoyance to ordinary people in the guise of being a Good Samaritan.
He preferred the present Contempt Petition filed under Section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, to prosecute the respondent for his illegal activities and accused him comitting many Criminal Contempt.
The Court at the outset noted that overwhelming records produced by the petitioner show that the respondent is in the habit of claiming himself to be the Trustee of some temples, on the strength of which, used to address representations to various Departments alleging that the lands of those temples have been encroached, with a prayer for removal of such encroachments and following them up by filing public interest litigations in the High Court against only the Government officials without including the alleged encroachers and praying for writs of mandamus to the authorities for the removal of the alleged encroachments.
The PILs were only against government officials without the inclusion of the alleged encroachers as parties. The respondent then approached authorities and made it appear as thought the High Court was monitoring the matters.
The Court found that Police had opened a history sheet earlier for the respondent and intelligence gathered by the Police shows that the respondent used to collect money by giving false promises to old people that he would get them pension amount.
It then proceeded to examine the charges against the respondent.
The Court observed that the respondent stated that he was a Kattalaidharar of Arulmighu Sugavaneswarar Temple and the English translation of the word “Kattalaidharar” is Trustee whereas the same is not true as “Kattalaidharar” means a person who sponsors the poojas or Annadhanam (free distribution of food) in a temple, perhaps, to commemorate a particular event. Trustee, on the other hand of a temple is called an “Arangavalar” in Tamil. He is in a higher position than a mere Kattalaidharar, because, the Trustee holds an office, whereas, a Kattalaidharar is merely a donor, the Court clarified.
In the view of the above, the Court confirmed that the respondent is guilty of misleading the court.
"When a Trustee of a temple comes to the High Court and files a public interest litigation alleging that some lands of the temple have been encroached, naturally, the High Court would give more weight to his assertion than the assertion of a mere donor."
The Court then commented on the cavalier manner in which the respondent has been filing public interest litigations in this Court.
"At least, in the second charge, the respondent claimed himself to be a “Kattalaidharar”, whereas, as regards these two temples, viz., Arulmighu Kaamanatheeswarar Temple, Salem and Sakthi Vinayagar Temple, Krishnagiri, he admits that he is not a Trustee, but, since the affidavit was cut and pasted, the error had crept in."
The Court concluded that concededly, he was not the Trustee of either Arulmigu Kamanaatheeswarar Temple or Arulmigu Sakthi Vinayagar Temple, but, he has stated in his affidavits that he is one.
His acts of giving false information would definitely interfere with the administration of justice and would fall within the expression “the administration of justice in any other manner” in Section 2(c)(iii) of the Contempt of Courts Act, the Court stated.
It thus held him guilty of those charges.
On respondent's allegation that the present petition is motivated, the Court noted that even if assuming for a moment that the petitioner has a motive against the respondent, to be noted, contempt proceedings are essentially between the Court and the alleged contemnor.
Therefore, the Court convicted the respondent for all the four charges and sentenced him to undergo four weeks simple imprisonment for each charge and pay a fine of Rs.2,000/- for each charge, in default to undergo two weeks simple imprisonment.
Case Title: Sivakumar vs A. Radhakrishnan
Case Detail: Contempt Petition No.1135 of 2020 & Sub Application No.430 of 2020
Coram: Justice PN Prakash and Justice AA Nakkiranb
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