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TMI Blog1958 (4) TMI 132X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... e further orders of the Magistrate passed in order to give effect to the learned Judge's order. The appellants contended before' the learned Judge that they hud not been guilty of contempt, but having been convicted, they have now appealed. 2. The question, first to bo decided is whether the appeal lies. It can be beld to lie only if it can be shown that the order appealed from is appealable under Clause 15 of the Letters Patent and it can be shown to be appealable under that Clause only if it is not an order of one of the excepted kinds and if it amounts to a judgment within the accepted meaning of that term. Two of the exceptions mentioned in Clause 15 may at once be put on one side, because no one can contend that in passing his order, the learned Judge was exercising appellate or revisional jurisdiction. The remaining exception is as to orders passed in the exercise of criminal jurisdiction and the question is whether it was in exercise of that jurisdiction that the learned Judge punished the appellants for contempt. From one point of view it can be said that since the learned Judge undoubtedly passed his original order in the Revision Case in exercise of a criminal ju ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... lts in an offence or a public wrong, whereas contempt consisting in disobedience of an order made for the benefit of a private individual results only in a private injury. To put the matter in other words, a contempt is merely a civil wrong where there has been disobedience of an order made for the benefit of a particular party, but where it has consisted in setting the authority of the Courts at naught and has had a tendency to invade the efficacy of the machinery maintained by the State for the administration of justice, it is a public wrong and consequently criminal in nature. 4. It is necessary at this stage, in order to determine the true nature of the contempt alleged in the present case and the proceedings taken for its punishment, to state a few facts. I have already stated that the order which is said to have been violated was passed in a Criminal Revision Case arising out of a proceeding under Section 145 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The dispute in that proceeding related to premises No. 99B Barrackpore Trunk Road, an area of about 9 bighas of land with a structure on it and a tank. The property now belongs to a private limited company, called Bhusan Chandra Bhar E ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... r carrying on its business of iron and steel fabrication. It was the entry of the lessees from Gangaram upon the land which started the proceedings out of which the present appeal has arisen. 6. On or about 16-12-1956, Sanatan who, it will be remembered, is one of the sons of Jahar, is said to have gone upon the land, abused the lessees' men and started throwing away the articles kept or installed there. Both sides were in a belligerent mood and as there was an apprehension of a breach of t h e p eac e t h e local Magistrate, o ne M r. Naha drew up proceedings under Section 145 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. To that proceeding be made Jaharlal Bhar and his three sons the first party, The second party were the four sons of Fakir and three directors of the Popular Iron and Steel (Private) Limited, namely Sukumar Banerjee, Sudarsan Dey and Manasa Prosad Eanerjee. The last-named three appear to have represented it to the Magistrate that into the dispute between the co-sharers or rather co-shareholders o f the Bhusan Chandra Bhar Estate Limited, they should not b e dragged and that pending the settlement of that dispute, they might be appointed Receivers of the property. The Ma ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... . Upon the termination of the Criminal Revision Case, the Magistrate resumed the proceedings under Section 145 and made his final order o n 13-3-1957. He held that the first party should retain possession of the disputed land and passed an order in the following terms: "I hereby pass order under Section 145(6) of Cr. P. C. and declare the 1st party to be entitled to possession of the disputed land until evicted therefrom in due course of law and forbid all disturbance of such possession until such eviction". 9. Against that order, the three directors of the Popular Iron and Steel Private Limited moved this Court again in revision. They obtained a Rule and thereupon Criminal Revision Case 332 o f 1957 was started. In their petition they alleged that they had obtained a lease or rather a sub-lease of the land from a party, competent to grant a lease on behalf of the Bhusan Chandra Bhar Estate Limited and accordingly they submitted that they should not have been excluded from possession of the land. It was also alleged by them that after the first party had re-entered the land in pursuance of the Magistrate's order, they had wrongfully removed and probably disposed o ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... not pass any order on that application. It is, therefore, ordered that the goods not claimed by opposite parties Nos. 1 to 4 but belonging to the petitioners, must be returned to them". The order of the learned Judge was made on 21-8-1957. 10. It is the above order which the appellants are said to have violated and thereby made themselves guilty of contempt of Court. It appears that after obtaining the order, the lessees went back to the Magistrate and made an application to him on 2- 9-57, praying that the Magistrate might restore possession of the land to them and return the articles mentioned in the inventory. On that application being made, a notice was served on the appellants and one of them, Sanatan appeared and contended that this Court had! not made any specific order directing them to deliver possession to the lessees. Thereupon, the Magistrate passed an order on 11-9-1957, directing the Officer-in-Charge of the Baranagoro Police Station to take necessary action for restoring possession of the premises to the lessees and to return the goods to them. 11. Thereafter sundry proceedings followed to which it will be necessary to return later. It will be sufficient to ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... tioners by attachment of goods belonging to the opposite parties is rather diverting and it must have found place in the petition, because the draftsman, having come across the word 'attachment' in the literature relating to contempt of Court, took it to bear its ordinary meaning of distraint of goods for the purpose of the realisation of debts. Be that as it may, it is clear that they were asking for the assistance of the Court for securing the benefit which had been already awarded to them by the Court's earlier order and they were invoking the Court's jurisdiction to take proceedings in contempt for the purpose of the enforcement of their right. The allegations upon which these prayers were based were only that on one occasion, when the petitioners themselves had tried to serve on the appellants a copy of an order of this Court, they had been abused and threatened with assault, that the first party, had not voluntarily restored possession of the land to them, nor returned the articles and that the Officer-in-Charge of the Baranagore Police Station had done nothing to assist them by carrying out the Magistrate's orders. 12. In the above state of facts. I am c ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... certain goods, but nothing is said as to any contumaciousness to the Court itself, nor as to any apprehension of the breach of the peace, there cannot, in my opinion, be any question of any criminal contempt. The true shape of the proceeding initiated by the respondents in the present case was that they were merely trying to obtain in fact the benefits to which this Court had declared them by its order to be entitled in law and, having failed to obtain them amicably, they were invoking the coercive process of the Court for securing to them the benefits which they, by their own efforts or the efforts of the authorities below, had failed to. secure. In a case of that type, it appears to me that, although the original proceeding was a criminal proceeding, the stage of averting a public wrong by making appropriate orders has long been passed. The matter has reached a stage where the question between the parties has become purely a question of the enforcement of certain rights in which no public interest is any longer in any way involved. I am, therefore, of opinion that the contempt alleged in the present case was civil contempt and the order for committal made by the learned Judge wa ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ticulars at all as to what words or deeds were alleged to have constituted contempt and what the precise charge was which they were to answer. It is also to be seen that although the learned Judge appears to have remarked frequently on violation of certain supplementary orders of the Magistrate, the Rule does not comprise any contempt of the Magistrate's Court, nor had the Magistrate made a report to this Court against the appellants, which is the proper procedure to follow under the Contempt of Courts Act in cases of contempt of subordinate Courts. We may therefore leave aside contempt of the Magistrate's Court altogether. As regard's the contempt of this Court also, the Rule as framed is, in my view, palpably deficient in essential particulars, for it is well established now that a notice or Rule for contempt must set out precisely and in detail the deeds or words which are said to constitute contempt and that if such details of the charge are not given there is no case to answer. This point, however, is of not much importance in the present case, because no complaint was ever made by the appellants that they did not understand what the charge against them was and did ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... voice, merely declaring that the possession of the respondents be maintained and it appears to me that whatever other proceedings may rightly be taken for non-compliance with o r violation of an order of that kind, it is impossible to found on it a proceeding for contempt, when the party concerned had not been disturbed or obstructed in exercising his rights of an existing possession. The order made with regard to the return of the goods bristles w i th greater difficulties. It is surprising that any order with regard to movable properties should at all have been made in a proceeding under Section 145 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, but perhaps since the articles were on the land, some kind of order was inevitable, although, strictly speaking it would not be an order under Section 145. The order of this Court as regards the goods was that "the goods not claimed by opposite parties Nos. 1 to 4 (that is to say, the appellants before us and their insane brother) but belonging to the petitioners, must be returned to them." It is not an order which says specifically that certain named goods, which the Court finds to belong to the petitioners, must be returned to them by ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... #39;s order. Two days later, on 27-9-1957, the Officerin- charge reported that they had already served an order on Jaharlal and Sanatan, directing them to return the goods, but Sanatan had sent to him a petition in which he stated that the goods were not goods not claimed by the first party, but that they had been claimed in the written statement filed in the original proceedings. Sanatan seems also to have said that Sukumar Banerjee had already taken away all the articles which was obviously not a fact. On the same day, the Magistrate made another order on the Police Officer to recover the goods from the first party and to return them to the petitioners and thereafter, for about a month and a half, nothing much appears to have happened. On 14-11-1957, the respondents made another application to the Magistrate by which they prayed that the Officer-in-charge of the Baranagore Police Station might be directed to give possession of the property with police force, that he might restore the goods and that the petitioners might have leave to move against the Police Officer and the members of the first party for contempt. They annexed with that application a copy off a First Information t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ar as the appellants are concerned, barring the allegation of abuse on the day when the order was sought to be served by the private agency of the respondents themselves, there is no allegation whatever, against them except that they had not voluntarily come forward to give up possession in favour of the respondents and had not voluntarily returned the goods. I am entirely unable to see how any proceeding for contempt can be founded on such allegations or lack of allegations. All that the learned Judge had said was that the possession of the respondents had to be maintained and that goods not claimed by members of the first party, but belonging to the respondents, should be returned. It is well-settled that if contempt is sought to be founded on a breach of a mandatory order, the same cannot be done unless it is shown that the mandatory order directed the alleged contemner to do a particular thing by a particular date or on a particular day and that he had not carried out the direction. If it is said that the particular party's possession of the property be "maintained", it is almost impossible to make out a breach of that order such as will constitute contempt, unles ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... patent and many of them may even be wicked. But to find that they have been guilty of contempt of this Court on such passive non-compliance with the implications of the Court's order appears to me to be impossible. I say nothing as to whether the appellants could be proceeded against successfully in other proceedings, but having given the matter my best consideration and bearing fully in mind the fact that a learned Judge of this Court made the order by way of passing judgment on a finding that an order of his own had been wilfully violated, I find myself unable to hold that, whatever the faults or defaults of the appellants may have been they have been guilty of contempt of Court or that proceedings in contempt could be rightly taken against these for what they had done after this Court's order. The jurisdiction in contempt, as I have said before, is a very special jurisdiction and is certainly a jurisdiction which it is necessary for the superior Courts to have and exercise whenever it is found that something has been done which tends to affect the administration of justice or which tends to impede its course or tends to affect public confidence in the ability of the Cou ..... 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