GH MOHD SOFI Vs. SHAMIM AHMAD SHAMIM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS appeal is directed against an order of a learned Single Judge of this court (Dr. A. S. Anand J), inter -dicting the entire press in the State of Jammu and Kashmir from publishing the statements of witnesses recorded by the court in a suit for damages pending before it between the parties, during the pendency of the suit.

(2.) THE respondent, who is a journalist and was also then a member of the Parliament, has filed a suit in January, 76 for recovery of Rupees One Lakh as damages against the appellant also a journalist, on the ground, that the latter is maliciously publishing false and baseless articles in his daily news -paper Srinagar Times containing highly defamatory and disparaging material against the former, merely with the object of lowering his honour and prestige in the estimation of the general public, both within and outside the State of Jammu and Kashmir. These, according to the respondent, are not merely isolated publications but are on the other hand a part of an unabated vicious campaign of vilification against the respondent, and owe their genesis to the inveterate hatred which the appellant has for the respondent. He has also reproduced in his plaint some excepts from the said publications. The defence of the appellant, put in a nutshell is, that either the articles published make no reference to the respondent or are otherwise based upon truth which cannot tend to defame him. Soon after the recording of evidence in the case had started, an application was moved by the respondent for restraining the entire press in the State of Jammu and Kashmir from publishing the statements of the witnesses recorded in the case without the prior permission of the court, as such an order, if not issued, would according to the respondent, not only destroy his reputation even before the falsity of the different articles published against him was established at the conclusion of the trial, but would also deter his other witnesses from appearing in the court, after knowing the plight of those who had already appeared and had been subjected to scathing cross -examination by the opposite party, more especially, to high -light the episode of sodomy wherein the respondent had been projected as a catamite. This, added the respondent, would surely impede the course of justice. This application was resisted by the appellant on a number of grounds, to begin with, he contended that the apprehension expressed by the respondent was only a figment of his imagination. It was, according to him, a case of an open trial, and what would be published in the papers would be a transcript of a witnesses statement, which could be even otherwise known to any and every one who attended the court proceedings. No extraordinary circumstances, according to the appellant, existed in the present case, which could persuade the court to make a departure from the general rule that every trial must be held in open for promoting public confidence in courts of law. Any such order if issued, complained the appellant, was bound to impinge on his right of freedom of expression, besides coming in the way of his right to carry on his occupation of the publisher and editor of a newspaper.

(3.) THE learned Single Judge, being of the view, that publishing of the statements of the respondents witnesses containing obscene and indecent matters was likely to embarrass his other witnesses who were yet to be examined, besides doing considerable harm to his own reputation, issued the impugned order, as in his opinion non -intervention by the court in such circumstances was on the ratio of Maresh Shidhar Mirajkar and ors. Vs. State of Maharashtra and another, AIR 1967 S. C. I bound to defeat the ends of justice, for the impartation of which alone law courts existed.