ADVOCATE GENERAL MADRAS Vs. S SUNDARAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE respondent, once s Sub Inspector of Police, was dismissed from service on the 3rd April 1956. The validity of his dismissal forms the subject matter of a writ petition (W. P. No. 749 of 1963) on the file of this court. When the petition was pending presumably coming to know that Srinivasan J. was likely to hear and dispose of the writ petition, a letter has been sent by the respondent to the learned Judge on the 11th September 1963. that the respondent wrote this letter is not now disputed. Therein he has stated that in the disciplinary proceedings leading up to his dismissal, the officers of the police department have fabricated false documents and committed forgery and allied offences and that the enquiry officer had further tampered with a document which was filed by him to disprove the charges against him. He then proceeded to state:

(2.) THE allegations made against the enquiry officer are but a substantial reproduction of similar allegations in the writ petition itself. It cannot, therefore, be said that they by themselves are new; but the vice of the letter of the respondents that he proceeded to communicate with the Judge privately, evidently with a view to influence his decision. As has been observed in Volume III of halsbury's Laws of England III Edn. (Lord Simonds) at page 7.

(3.) THERE can be little doubt, in the instant case that notwithstanding the fact that the substantial allegations in the letter to the Judge were also contained in the writ petition itself they were intended to influence the Judge and create sympathy in favour of the respondent. Dealing with this subject, Oswald in his Book on contempt Committal and Attachment at page 48 observes. "it is a grave contempt of court to communicate with or to seek in any way to influence a Judge upon the subject of any matter he has to determine".