(BABU) GURU CHARAN PRASHAD Vs. AJ NEWSPAPER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application for taking proceedings against Babu Rao Vishnu Pararkar, Editor, Printer and Publisher of the "Aj" newspaper. The facts are not now in dispute and may be accepted as substantially set forth in the written statement filed by the editor. On 28 January 1931 one Beni Ram Shukul brought a certified copy of a document purporting to be a will of one Mt. Raj Rani and showed it to the assistant manager Sri Baldeo Das and requested him to publish it as an advertisement. Rs. 15 were paid for the costs of printing and the copy was published in the paper. We may assume in favour of the editor that the certified copy was actually shown to the assistant manager and was taken back after a copy of it had been retained in his office. The editor however does not deny that the assistant manager understood that this was a document filed in a suit pending in the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Benares. As a matter of fact the copy itself purported to have been taken from a document filed in that suit. It is also now an admitted fact that in the proceedings relating to the substitutionof names in that suit the genuineness of the alleged will of Mt. Raj Rani was seriously disputed by the opposite party.

(2.) On these facts there cannot be the slightest doubt that the whole object of publishing the will in the advertisement column was to announce to the public that a will of Mt, Raj Rani existed and that the contents of it were as put in the paper. The whole purpose obviously must have been to make the public believe in the genuineness of the document and to act upon it. It is obvious that this was likely to prejudice the mind of the public against the party to the suit who was impugning the genuineness of the document. The publication undoubtedly helped to create an atmosphere in favour of the party relying upon it and adverse to them who were contesting it. If before the disposal of a pending suit in which a will is disputed newspapers are allowed to interfere in this way with a fair administration of justice there would be a serious harm done.

(3.) In Oswald's Contempt of Court (Edn. 3, p. 95) it is noted that printing, even without comments, and circulating the brief, pleadings, petition, or evidence of one side only, is a contempt; and accounts of a case by notices, advertisements, or circulars, which misrepresent, or present mere ex parte statements of the case, are a contempt.