STATE Vs. RAM BRIKSH BENIPURI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application in contempt. Sri Ram Briksh Benipuri, opposite party 1, is the editor and Sri Chandradeo Prasad Verma, opposite party 2, the printer of a daily journal the Janata published in Patna. The proceeding relates to a news item which appeared in the paper on 2-12-1951 under the Caption "United Conspiracy of Zamindars, Congressmen and Government officers. Lives of the Cultivators of Piparia in Danger. They are being ruined by being implicated in false cases".

(2.) It appears that for some time there has been ill-feeling and trouble between tenants and landlords in the Piparia Diara which culminated on 30-10-1950, in a clash between the men of the two sides and two criminal proceedings based on the counter versions of the two parties were instituted. After preliminary inquiry in both these cases orders committing them to the Court of Session for trial were passed on 17-5-1952. It is clear therefore, that at the time when the news item in question was published the two cases were pending before the Magistrate.

(3.) The news item which purports to be from some correspondent of the paper states that in Piparia elaka a dispute between the landlords and the tenants has been going on for about four years and that, when the "tyrant Zamindars of the loca-lity" saw they could not gain their ends by the use of the lathi, they decided to ruin the cultivators and force them to surrender their lands by implicating them in false cases instituted against them with the help of Government officers influenced by the local Congress workers. In pursuance of this plan, it is stated, a batch of armed police has been sent to the locality to help the zamindars. Details are then given of various ways in which the Sub-Inspector and the constables who compose this party of armed police are oppressing the tenants. The report goes on: