UNION OF INDIA Vs. SATISH CHANDRA SHARMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) An odd case of sentence of three months' civil imprisonment and attachment of assets of the Centrl Government and two of its officers for default in instant reinstatement of a Railway Inspector removed from service for misconduct occasions this appeal by special leave.

(2.) The Court system is neither a cloistered virtue nor a self-righteous process and readily re-examines, in the appellate crucible, the judgments rendered at lesser levels even if the subject matter be, as here, alleged disobedience of a judicial order. Justice is not hubristic and truth triumphs by self-criticism. And so, this court, in keeping with such an invigilative perspective, must review the punitive directive of the trial court, affirmed up to the High Court but challenged before us, that the Union of India and its officers in the Railway Department - the appellants - do suffer distraint of property and imprisonment of person for the contempt of its authority by non-compliance with its order of injunction. This case disturbs us somewhat and constrains us to go to the basics in a certain branch of the jurisprudence of contempt of court.

(3.) As will presently appear, the synthesis of two seemingly antithetical creeds, both vital to our Republic and powerfully projected by this appeal is the key to the crucial issue where disobedience of a mandatory injunction to retain in service, pendente lite, the respondent, a railway inspector, regardless of the disciplinary proceedings which had by then allegedly culminated in his exit from service (sic). The court shall neither be imperious nor be obsequious. The law, in the area of contempt of court, must avoid the extremes of hyperreactivity to marginal indifference to judicial authority out of pragmatic difficulties and of hypo-respect for court commands in a cavalier spirit of 'the court has no guns. Why care '