TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1943 (7) TMI 8
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....ditor, relying on the accuracy of his informant, were interpreted as implying any malicious intention on his part or intended to bring the court or any member of it into disrepute. Their Lordships, for reasons which will appear, do not find it necessary to enumerate the facts alleged in Mr. Gandhi's affidavit. In substance, they were that" Mr. Singhal had been present in the court of Mr. Vidyarthi on July 31 when he gave judgment in the murder case, and that after sentencing the four accused to transportation for life the judge made the following statement in open court: "Since the Chief Justice, who has been requested by His Excellency the Governor to help in the war effort, has asked us to raise subscriptions for the war fun....
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.... clients are guilty of contempt of court; and, in the absence of an apology, for which we give time until the day after to-morrow, it shall be our duty to pass sentence according to law." There then followed a series of transactions on which the appellants, in support of their case, proposed strongly to rely, but which their Lordships find in unnecessary to discuss in view of their opinion on the question whether the appellants were guilty of any contempt of court on which they ought to have been convicted. The Chief Justice, before the day reserved for judgment arrived, had with Collister J. interviewed Mr. Vidyarthi and gave notice to the appellants on September 11 that as he had asserted that most of the allegations in Mr. Gandhi....
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.... founded his report on "nothing more substantial than a suggestion or an easy inference from the facts." The Chief Justice then stated that in the opinion of the court the charge of contempt was established against all three respondents. He proceeded to state what impression, in the opinion of the court, an ordinary intelligent reader would receive from reading the editorial comment of August 6. "The comment contains a clear insinuation that the Chief Justice had issued a circular to all judicial officers to raise contributions from litigants and others to the War Fund, that pressure was thereby being exerted by an authority which it would not be safe to displease,' and that the prestige of the courts would thus be impair....
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....he respondent, and their Lordships must not be taken as expressing any opinion one way or the other on them. In their Lordships' opinion, the conviction for contempt of court cannot stand. The cases of contempt which consist of "scandalizing the court itself" are fortunately rare, and require to be treated with much, discretion. In 1899 this Board pronounced proceedings for this species of contempt to be obsolete in this country, though surviving in other parts of the Empire, but they added that it is a weapon to be used sparingly and always with reference to the administration of justice: McLeod v. St. Aubyn [1899] A.C. 549. In In re a Special Reference from the Bahama Islands [1893] A.C. 138 the test applied by the very stro....