Thaindian News

New Delhi, June 20 (IANS) While cautioning against the “dangerous trend” of making false allegations against judicial officers of subordinate courts, the Supreme Court has said that judges were not robots with no heart and capacity of feeling hurt.

“The dangerous trend of making false allegations against judicial officers and humiliating them requires to be curbed with heavy hand, otherwise the judicial system itself would collapse,” said the apex court bench of Justice B.S. Chauhan and Justice Swatanter Kumar in their judgment delivered June 15.

Speaking for the bench on the plea of an advocate convicted for contempt of court, Justice Chauhan said: “The courts certainly cannot be intimidated to seek favourable orders.”

The bench and the bar have to avoid unwarranted situations on trivial issues that hamper the cause of justice and are in the interest of none, the judgment said.

The court said this while dismissing a petition by Vishram Singh Raghubanshi who was convicted by the Allahabad High Court for committing contempt of court by abusing a presiding judge in Etawah district court in Uttar Pradesh.

Rejecting his plea, the judgment said that the appellant lawyer has “intimidated” the presiding officer of the court by “hurling filthiest abuses and lowered the authority of the court, which is tantamount to interfere with the due course of judicial proceedings”.

Raghubanshi was awarded three months simple imprisonment and a fine of Rs.2,000. The court declined to accept his apology which it said was neither sincere nor bonafide.

“We are of the view that the apology tendered by the appellant had neither been sincere nor bona fide and thus, not worth acceptance,” the judgment said.

Raghubanshi was accused of breaching the decorum of the trial and using abusive language against the trial court judge in the wake of the controversy regarding the genuineness of a person who came to surrender with him July 25, 1997.