Courtney-Terrell, C.J.In this case Murli Manohar Prasad, who is the Editor and Printer of the "Searchlight," a newspaper circulating in this province, has been called upon by the Court to show cause why he should not be committed or otherwise dealt with for contempt of Court for having published certain articles in the issues of that newspaper dated 24th June, 18th, 20th, 22nd, and 29th July and 5th August, concerning the High Court and the Chief Justice and his administration of justice in this Court. The proprietors of the paper, the Behar Journals Limited, and its Directors and Manager have also been made respondents to the rule.

2. The rule was issued by myself as Chief Justice sitting with Fazl Ali, J., from the Criminal Bench. It is necessary before proceeding further to deal with a preliminary point raised on behalf of the respondents to the effect that the rule should have been issued by the Court as an entire body and not until the whole of its judiciary had been consulted, and that the Chief Justice together with another single Judge had no jurisdiction to issue any rule. It was argued that since the Court had not seen fit to make any rule dealing with the issue of rules of this nature nor as to the Bench before which such applications should be placed it followed that the Court could not exercise the jurisdiction to issue a rule save when sitting as an entire and corporate body.

3. To my mind the answer to this contention is simple. In the first place by Clause 28, Letters Patent:

any function which is hereby directed to be performed by the High Court of Judicature at Patna in the exercise of its original or appellate jurisdiction may be performed by any Judge or by any Division Court thereof appointed or constituted for such purpose in pursuance of Section 108, Government of India Act 1915.

4. It was conceded that if a rule were in fact issued such rule could on its return be dealt with by any single Judge or any Bench of Judges selected by the Chief Justice and it cannot be denied that if I had chosen to make a formal order in this particular case that the matter of the issue of this rule should be dealt with by myself alone, such order would have been effective under the Letters Patent and under the Government of India Act. Such an order though not formally made must be implied from the fact that the rule was issued by Fazl Ali, J., and myself.

5. Further it has been the invariable practice for rules of this nature to be issued by any single Judge or any number of Judges of a Court of Record. Indeed it is impossible to conceive how the jurisdiction could be effectively exercised unless such a procedure were resorted to. In none of the reported cases has this point ever been raised and although it is true that that state of affairs does not preclude the respondents from raising it in this case yet a decision that it was well-founded would involve a complete change of a practice which has been uniformly followed, which has received the approval of every High Court in India and has been followed in cases which have reached the Privy Council. In our opinion the point has no substance.

6. It is necessary in order that the merits of this matter may be appreciated to refer to certain decisions of the criminal Bench of this Court to each of which I was a party and in each of which I delivered the judgment of the Court. The earliest of these was Bhagivat Singh v. Emperor AIR 1929 Pat. 65 in which certain persons in a rural district were convicted of culpable homicide in respect of the death of a man who had been drowned. It is unnecessary to set forth the judgment at length. It has been read in the course of this case and one point only need be noticed. A witness appeared in support of the prosecution who some five and 20 years before the occurrence in question had been convicted of giving false evidence. Dealing with the argument of counsel for the defence with reference to the evidence of this witness I observed in the course of my judgment:

Further he stated that the witnesss evidence should be regarded with great suspicion because on a former occasion some five and 20 years ago this witness had been convicted of giving false evidence, but it appears from what we know of that former case that it was not a case of any great magnitude and having regard to the habits of the people in this particular part of the world where the giving of false evidence, however deplorable it may be, is not considered an offence which is fatal to a mans reputation to say the least of it, I do not think that much importance need be placed on that fact.

7. I may gay at once that it was not my intention to impute to the people of this province or of the district of Saran any immoral views on the subject of perjury. The case attracted no attention. It was not reported and was not made the subject of public comment until the issue of the articles, the subject of this rule.

8. The next judgment to be mentioned was Emperor v. Vidya Sagar Pande AIR 1928 Part. 497. A number of persons were charged under Sections 149 and 306, I.P.C., with being members of an unlawful assembly whose common object was to abet the suicide of a certain woman and with abetting the womans suicide. In the course of that judgment I discussed the facts of the case and came to the conclusion that the accused were all guilty of the abetment of the womans suicide. I was further of opinion that the evidence showed that with regard to certain of the accused they had been parties to a plot the nature of which was in fact to murder the deceased woman. With regard to one of the accused, a person named Jagdeo, I said:

As to Jagdeo he is an older youth and he should have exercised more intelligence. We believe, but we are not certain, that he was in this plot also but we consider that the justice of his case will be met by sentencing him to rigorous imprisonment for seven years.

9. Those individuals whore we considered to have been parties to the plot to murder the deceased were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for ten years. In the course of this judgment the word "plot" is not used save in the passage which I have quoted.

10. The third case was one in which a person named Jagat Narain Lal was charged with sedition u/s 124-A, I.P.C., in respect of an article which appeared in a vernacular newspaper named "Mahabir" of which he was the editor. The article complained of accused the Government of deliberately fomenting communal strife. The accused was represented on the appeal by Mr. Sachchidananda Sinha, an eminent advocate of this Court. In an argument of great learning and considerable length he set forth the law relating to sedition and the proper canons of construction to be applied to any publication alleged to be seditious. The case was heard at some length. The arguments used and the authorities cited by Mr. Sinha were very carefully considered and the Court expressed itself as fully satisfied with the principles of law enunciated by him, nor were those principles contested in any way by the learned Government Advocate who appeared for the Crown.

11. The case, therefore, resolved itself into one of very small compass, that is to say, the actual meaning of the article when construed according to the principles enunciated by Mr. Sinha in his argument. In the course of my judgment [in Jagat Narain Lall Vs. Emperor, . I set forth the view that the meaning of the article was unmistakable, that its effect would, be to cause persons who read it and believed it to hate the Government and hold it in contempt and to become disaffected. I came to the conclusion and expressed my view that the tone of the article was such as to deprive it of any-serious appeal to intelligent persons but-having regard to the degree of harm-which the article might produce upon-uneducated minds, I held that the sentence imposed by the Court appealed from, was justified. This decision was delivered on 19th July.

12. The fourth case was concerned with a jail appeal. Eleven persons had been convicted of dacoity and the principal; evidence in the case was that of a member of the gang who had turned approver. As to six of the accused the evidence of the approver was amply corroborated, but as to five the Sessions Judge had convicted the accused upon the evidence of the approver alone giving in great-detail the reasons which he considered justified him in this course. This case as I have said, came before Macpherson, J. and myself as a jail appeal and upon; reading the judgment we formed impression that it would be wise to consider with great care the law relating to the acceptance of the uncorroborated evidence of an approver and the circumstances in which the law had been applied to the facts of this particular case. We, therefore, directed that the case be set down, for argument and the learned Government Advocate appeared in support of the conviction. The case was very thoroughly argued and we examined all the authorities. Finally, we delivered suparat judgments in Rattan Dhanuk and Others Vs. Emperor, which have since been reported, upholding the convictions and setting forth at some length the considerations which should guide the Court in coming to a conclusion whether or not to act upon the uncorroborated testimony of an approver.

13. Now the articles, the subject of this rule, contain reflections upon me in my capacity as a Judge and as Chief Justice of this Court and I think it right, before considering them, in detail to deal briefly with the law applicable to comments of this nature and to the jurisdiction of the Court under which such comments may be punished. Prom the earliest times it has been recognized that superior Courts of Record have an inherent jurisdiction to punish contempts of their authority and it has been pointed out that contempt of a Court of Record may be of one or more different kinds. We are here dealing with that class of contempt which has been termed scandalizing the Court. In Beg v. Grey [1900] 2 Q.B. 36 Lord Russell, C.J. said:

Any act done or writing published calculated to bring a Court or a Judge of the Court into contempt, or to lower his authority, is a contempt of Court. That is one class of contempt. Further, any act done or writing published calculated to obstruct or interfere with the due course of justice, or the lawful process of the Courts, is a contempt of Court. The former class belongs to the category which Lord Hardwicke, L.C. characterized as scandalizing a Court or a Judge. That description of that class of contempt is to be taken subject to one and an important qualification. Judges and Courts are alike open to criticizm, and if reasonable argument or any expostulation is offered against judicial act as contrary to law or the public good, no Court could or would treat that as contempt of Court. The law aught not to be astute in such cases to criticize adversely what under such circumstances and with such an object is published but it is to be remembered that in this matter the liberty of the press is no greater and no less than the liberty of every subject of the Queen.

14. Then follow some remarks about the facts of that particular case and the Chief Justice continues:

We have therefore to deal with it as a case of contempt and we have to deal with it brevi manu. This is not a newfangled jurisdiction; it is a jurisdiction as old as the common law itself, of which it forms part. It is a jurisdiction, the history, purpose, and extent of which are admirably treated in the opinion of Wilmot, C.J., then Wilmot, J. It is a jurisdiction, however, to be exercised with scrupulous care, to be exercised only when the case is clear and beyond reasonable doubt.

15. In a much earlier case in the reign of King George III, Rex v. White 1 Camp. 359 (N). Grose, J., is reported as having said that it certainly was lawful with decency and candour to discuss the propriety of the verdict of a jury or the decision of a Judge and if the defendants should be thought to have done no more in this-instance (under consideration) they would be entitled to an acquittal; but on the contrary they had transgressed the law and ought to be convicted if the extracts from the newspaper set out in the information contained no reasoning or discussion but only declamation and invective, and were written not with a view to elucidate the truth but to injure the character of individuals and to bring into hatred and contempt the administration of justice in the country. The view of the law taken in these cases and particularly in the case of Reg. v. Gray [1900] 2 Q.B. 36 has been consistently followed by the High Courts of India. In In the matter of the Amrita Bazar Patrika [1917] 45 Cal. 169 Mookerjee, J., says:

It is not necessary for our present purpose to give an exhaustive enumeration of acts which amount to contempts of Court. It is sufficient to state that scandalous attacks upon Judges, calculated to cause an obstruction to public justice, do constitute such contempt. Blackstone, in a celebrated passage of his. Commentaries (Vol. 4, p. 285), which will be found quoted in Legal Remembrancer v. Motilal Ghose [1913] 41 Cal. 173 specifies, in his description of contempts of Court, contempts which arise "by speaking or writing contemptuously of the Court or Judges, acting in their judicial capacity and which demonstrate a gross want of that regard and respect, which, when once Courts of Justice are deprived of their authority, so necessary for the good order of the Kingdom, is entirely lost amongst "the people." Sir John Wilmot, C.J., in Rex v. Almon [1765] Wilm. 243 justifies a similar view."

16. After quoting the opinion of Wilmot, C.J. and giving a list of recent authorities Mookerjee, J., continues:

The principle deducible from these cases is that punishment is inflicted for attacks of this character upon Judges, not with a view to protect either the Court as a whole or the individual Judges of the-Court from a repetition of the attack, but with a view to protect the public, and especially those who, either voluntarily or by compulsion, are subject to the jurisdiction of the Court, from the mischiaf they will incur, if the authority of the tribunal, be undermined or impaired.

17. A little later on he says:

It is immaterial whether the attack on the Judge is with reference to a cause about to the tried, or actually under trial, or recently adjudged; in each instance the tendency is to poison the fountain of justice, to create distrust, and to destroy the confidence of the people in the Courts, which are of prime importance to them in the protection of their rights and liberties.

18. The same Judge says:

The power to punish for contempt is inherent in the very nature and purpose of Courts of Justice. It subserves once a double purpose, namely, as an aid to protect the dignity and authority of the tribunal and also as an aid in the enforcement of civil remedies. The power may consequently be exercised in civil or criminal cases or independently of both, and either solely for the preservation of the authority of the Court or in aid of the rights of the litigant or for both these purposes combined. By reason of this twofold attribute, proceedings in contempt may be regarded as anomalous in their nature, possessed of characteristics which render them more or less difficult of ready or definite classification in the realm of judicial power. Hence, such proceedings have sometimes been styled sui generis.

19. To this authoritative expression of learned Judges I venture to add a consideration, which has also in the past been made the subject of judicial comment. It must be remembered that a Judge by reason of his office is precluded from entering into controversy in the columns of the public press. Whether the comments be of a permissible or of an improper character, he cannot enter the arena and do battle with his adversary upon equal terms. The Judge of a superior Court is moreover precluded by considerations of decency from having recourse to the remedy available to any other citizen of whom defamatory words are spoken or written, that is to say, of taking proceedings for libel or slander before the ordinary tribunals which, are subject to his own jurisdiction, and he requires, therefore, in the exercise of his office a special protection in order that his authority and dignity may be maintained.

20. I now turn to a consideration of the articles which are the subject of this case. In the issue of Sunday, 24th June, there appeared an article which dealt at considerable length with the judgment in the Sati case delivered on 13th June. It is not necessary to deal with this article at any length. It was a criticism and a perfectly legitimate criticizm of the judgment but towards the conclusion it mentions the particular case of the youth Jagdeo and states: "We propose to deal with this aspect of the case in a subsequent issue." In the issue of Wednesday. 18th July, and in the issues of Friday, 20th July, and Sunday, 22nd July, there appeared three articles successively dealing with this case. Now, in addition to comments of another character, with which I do not think it necessary to deal, there appear distinct allegations several times repeated that the youth Jagdeo should have been acquitted and there is quoted in support of this contention the observation from my judgment which I have set forth above: "We believe but we are not certain that he was in this plot." This is taken as a distinct statement that the Court was of opinion that Jagdeo was not guilty of the offences with which he was charged but was nevertheless sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for seven years.

21. I have been at some pains to point out that my observation in the judgment has no such meaning and that the doubt in the mind of the Court with respect to Jagdeo was merely as to his complicity in the plot to bring about the death of the woman. There was never in the mind of the Court the slightest doubt that Jagdeo was guilty of abetment of suicide. It is somewhat shocking that any one should on a mere perusal of the judgment and without any further enquiry come to the conclusion that any Judge could convict a person after having expressed a doubt of his guilt of the offence charged. Had the matter rested on this single misinterpretation of the judgment of the Court, we should not have been inclined to take a serious view of these articles. On Sunday, 29th July, however, appeared an article commenting upon the case of Jagat Narain Lal. The article contains many offensive expressions in the worst possible taste. Of the greater part of these we do not think it necessary to take notice. There is, however, one grave charge against me in my capacity as a Judge which is deliberately made, which is not susceptible of any misunderstanding, which is a reflection upon my judicial conduct of a nature so grave that if it were true I should be unworthy to hold my high office. Early in the article the author says:

We say nothing as to the conviction of and the sentence passed on Babu Jagat Narain Lal, for such conviction must be expected as a matter of course in the system under which we live

and a little later on:

A long and learned argument was advanced by the learned oounsel for Babu Jagat Narain Lal as to the proper interpretation to be placed on the subject-matter of the charge. But the learned Chief Justice does not appear to have given even a cursory consideration to the argument and disposed of the whole case practically in a single sentence.

22. Now in view of the fact that a full report of this case appeared in the Searchlight, it is impossible for the Editor to disclaim a knowledge of what in fact took place at the hearing of the appeal. Then after commenting upon the sentence as being far too severe, the author of the article says:

But an enormity of this kind from a Judge who does not feel the horror of sentencing a man to seven years rigorous imprisonment, though he is not certain for his guilt, is not at all surprising. A Judge who does not observe the elementary principles of criminal jurisprudence that the presumption of innocence is fundamental to the British system of criminal law and that that presumption is in no way rebutted by a finding that the tribunal believes but is not certain of the guilt of the accused person may of course be excused if he does not know that the measure of punishment in a case of sedition is the measure of importance which can be attached to the subject-matter of the charge for sedition. But it is indeed lamentable that the Chief Justice of the Patna High Court should have ignored these elementary principles of law.

23. Later on he says:

if the judgment which we are considering had been pronounced by a junior Deputy Magistrate, then we have no doubt that the High Court would have severely censured him. As we have already pointed out, the argument of Mr. Sinha have not been referred to; and in fact the real part of the judgment consists of not more than one or two sentences. Even Babu Jagat Narain Lal, a silly, noisy little man though he may be, was entitled to ask the High Court to consider points urged on his behalf.

24. Now, up to this point it has been contended on behalf of the respondent that the article is a mere criticizm of the form of the judgment and a complaint that the judgment itself does not contain a review of all the points raised by the learned Counsel for the defence. It is, however, clearly not the intention of the author to comment merely upon the form of the judgment. His intention is to give the impression that the Chief Justice ignored the arguments of the counsel and refused to consider the authorities cited and that such is the intention of the author is made abundantly clear by the next succeeding passages of the article:

How are we to say that those points have been considered, since there is no indication in the judgment that the Chief Justice was even aware of those points. It is our deliberate conviotion that the life and the liberty of the subject must necessarily be in grave peril when the Chief Justice of the highest judicial tribunal in the land ignores the arguments, refuses to consider the authorities that may be cited, and in the end produces a judgment full of sound and fury but signifying, nothing, except imprisonment so far as the: parties are concerned.

and later

it is obvious then, that the life and liberty of the subject are in danger under the present administration of the criminal law and unless we wish to perish, we must protect ourselves against this new menace.

25. The argument was advanced on behalf of the respondent that all this meant no-more than that the judgment of the High Court is taken as an instruction and example by the lower Courts and that the imperilling of the life and liberty of the subject referred to was the mere imperilling of the life and liberty of such persons as might come before inferior Courts after reading such a judgment. It is for this Court as a matter of law to construe words and phrases which have no technical significance and to decide what is their meaning and what is the effect which they are calculated to produce, and I have no hesitation in deciding that the words used by the author mean and are calculated to mean and intended to mean that the conduct of cases before the Chief Justice is such that the arguments and authorities are ignored and that for that reason the life and liberty of the subject brought before the Chief Justice is in peril. Such a statement, made about a Judge in the execution of his office is a contempt of Court of the gravest character.

26. On Sunday, 5th August, there appeared an article entitled "Press Comments on the Chief Justice." Among the phrases occurring in this article are the following:

As a matter of fact, the outcry is nothing, more than the expression of the outraged feelings of the people over observations and conviction that are exercising the minds of the public at large. It cannot but be otherwise in an official-ridden country like India, which presents the amazing spectable of being the-only civilized country where judicial and executive functions are deliberately kept combined by a system of Government whose promises for separation have been broken as often ,as they have been made. It is a truism there is no gainsaying that the one silver lining in an utterly dark and dismal horizon has been a lurking belief on the part of the people that the High Court with its great traditions of judicial independence stood, at any rate in some measure, as the protector of the life and the liberties of the people. The High Court has been regarded as the one bulwark against executive wantonness and judicial vagaries and throughout the period of office of Sir Edward Chamier and Sir Dawson-Miller, despite occasional (mistakes, public confidence in the High Court remained unshaken. It would be doing violence to truth to suggest that the same confidence is a fact of to-day.

27. Later on there occur the words:

His Lordship started with introducing far reaching changes in the rules without as much as a pretence at consultation with the Bar, who were one fine morning done the courtesy of being presented with a fait accompli. Then came the Sati case judgment with its bad law, angry rhetoric and, in the circumstances, monstrous sentences. The conviction of a man on the uncorroborated testimony of an approver followed and soon after came the amazing judgment in the case of Babu Jagat Narayan Lal.

28. A little further on he says:

But by far the most amazing feat was the insult levelled at our people in this part of the world by one who is not a globe-trotter out to earn cheap notoriety nor an executive official carrying the White Mans Burden on his shoulders, but the Chief Justice of a High Court of Judicature. Whatever his Lordship may have meant, the public at large must take him at his word and they refuse to tolerate their being characterized practically as habitual liars.

29. The passages above-quoted distinctly impute to the Chief Justice the reproach of passing monstrous sentences, of unjustifiably convicting a man on the uncorroborated testimony of an approver and with accusing the people of India, or the people of this province, of being habitual liars. None of these reproaches is justified and the cumulative effect of these statements having regard to the preceding articles, is to lead to the belief that the monstrous sentences, improper reception of the testimony of an approver and the wholesale condemnation of the people of the province as habitual liars are facts which render the Chief Justice unfit for his office and undoubtedly tend to debase his authority. As I have said the title of the article is "Press Comments on the Chief Justice" and there is quoted, amongst other articles dealing with the Chief Justice, one from a paper called "Forward" published at Calcutta. This article contains a large cross-headline "prostituting the position of a Judge." Under this headline was set forth the following statement:

Was any evidence adduced by the prosecutor to warrant the presumption that the accused was a fool and a knava If not, what justification the Chief Justice had for prostituting his high and privileged position and depicting the accused in such a thick colour The vilification of tin helpless accused does not seem to be the only art in which the learned Chief Justice indulged. His Lordship thought it fit to utilize his judicial position to do a bit of propaganda in favour of British imperializm and proceeded to make a little critical examination of the psychology of the mind of the accused.

30. I do not propose to deal further with the use of the word "prostituting" than stating that neither of the counsel appeiring for the respondents was able to justify its use or to urge with any force that it had other than a grossly derogatory implication nor were, they able to justify the statement that the judgment-contained political propaganda in favour of British Imperialize. The article introducing these Press Comments and the Press Comment itself cannot be considered otherwise than as a gross contempt of Court.

31. In conclusion I cannot do more than follow the example of many well-known and distinguished Judges in pointing out that a Judge should neither fear nor resent public criticizm, whether of his judgment in matters of law or his judgments in matters of fact, and I well realize that it is the duty of a Judge to protect the privileges of the public against acts of tyranny as well as against the crimes of public offenders and I should have been among the last to claim any exemption from such criticizm. I hope that I may always be open to criticizm and that my natural vanity may never prevent me from giving ear to my critics nor from affording to them such attention and respect, as their position in life, learning and professional standing may claim. But I should be unworthy of the high office to which His Majesty has been pleased to appoint me if I refrained from protecting that office or from punishing those who offer it affront. The articles for which the respondent is responsible are undoubtedly calculated to lower the prestige of the High Court over which I have the honour to preside and to impair my dignity as a Judge and as Chief Justice. This is the first example of its kind which has occurred in this province and it is to be hoped that it will be the last. We have not thought fit to punish either the company or its directors or manager. The list of directors contains the names of many worthy people who, we are sure, cannot have viewed the proceedings of the Editor of their paper with any approval. We have brought them here in order that they may have due cognizance of the facts and we propose in their case to make no order. We desire, however, to say that any repetition of this offence will be met with consequences far more severe. The sentence upon Murli Manohar Prasad, who is described in the "Searchlight" newspaper as the Editor and Printer, is that he, before 2 oclock this afternoon, pay a fine of five hunderd rupees and that in default of such payment he be confined in the Patna jail mntil such fine shall have been paid.

Adami, J.

I agree.

Ross, J.

I agree.

Kulwant Sahay, J.

I agree.

Fazl Ali, J.

I agree.