KEDAR PRASAD SINHA Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This rule has been issued at the instance of the petitioners Kedar Prasad Sinha and Arjun Pandey, calling upon the respondents, who are twenty-five in number, to show cause why they should not be committed for contempt of Court

(2.) The material facts are the following. :-- The petitioners along with nine others are accused in a case of rioting and murder which was instituted upon a police report. While the commitment proceedings were pending in the court of a Munsif Magistrate at Jamui (District Monghyr), the Assistant District Prosecutor incharge of the case filed a petition under Section 494, Code of Criminal Procedure, for permission of the Court to withdraw from the prosecution. That was on the 18th September 1967. But the court declined to grant the permission. Against that order two criminal revision applications were filed in this court, one on behalf of the State of Bihar which was numbered as Criminal Revision No. 2035 of 1967. and the other on behalf of the petitioners which was numbered as criminal Revision No. 2036 of 1967. Both these Criminal Revisions were admitted by this court on the 30th November, 1967, and they are still pending for final hearing.

(3.) During the pendency of the aforesaid Criminal Revisions certain matter was published in the official gazette known as the Bihar Gazette in its extraordinary issue dated the 12th March 1968, and the same was also published in a daily newspaper of Patna known as the Searchlight in its issue dated the 14th March, 1968. It was in the following terms.