SC won't drop case against Arundhati

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, OCT. 29. The Supreme Court today declined to drop the contempt proceedings initiated against the Booker Prize winner, Ms. Arundhati Roy, and posted the case for hearing in January next.

A Bench, comprising Mr. Justice G.B. Pattanaik and Ms. Justice Ruma Pal, observed that ``on going through the reply filed by Ms. Arundhati Roy, we are not satisfied that the matter should be dropped''.

The Bench, which also declined the request of her senior counsel, Mr. Shanthi Bhushan, to refer the matter to a five-judge Constitution Bench, however, exempted her from personal presence in the court during the next hearing.

The Bench also rejected an application filed on behalf of 14 eminent personalities, including the former Lok Sabha Speaker, Mr. Rabi Ray, for impleading them in the case. ``We do not need quantity to decide the matter. In a contempt matter the lis is between the contemnor and the court.''

On September 5, the court had issued a contempt notice to Ms. Roy after dropping contempt proceedings against the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader, Ms. Medha Patkar, and the Advocate, Mr. Prashant Bhushan, in a petition filed by some advocates for staging a dharna outside the Supreme Court in December last and shouting slogans against the judiciary for the judgment in the Sardar Sarovar case.

Issuing notice to her, the court had held that Ms. Roy ``appears to us, prima facie, to have committed contempt. She has imputed motives to specific courts for entertaining litigation or passing orders against her. She has accused courts of `harassing' her (of which the present proceeding has been cited as an instance) as if the judiciary were carrying out a personal vendetta against her''.

In her reply, Ms. Roy said, ``It has always been accepted that the judgments and actions of the courts can be subjected to the most severe and trenchant criticism... If such discussion is prohibited on pain of contempt, it will render the entire analysis of the judiciary completely sterile''.

Referring to the court's observation that three paragraphs in her earlier affidavit filed on April 16 amounted to criminal offence under Section 2 of the Contempt of Court Act, Ms. Roy said it was an incorrect interpretation of law and added ``it will have the chilling effect of gagging the press and preventing it from reporting on and analysing matters that vitally concern the lives of millions of Indian citizens''.

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