Taking strong exception to a legal news magazine's "mischievous and outrageous allegations" against his son, a Delhi high court judge has initiated contempt proceedings against the entire editorial staff of the periodical and gagged both print and electronic media from circulating the 'false' story.
In his October 10 order, the judge said: "On enquiry from my son, I have been informed that the club has been given licence by the company (sic) in favour of M/s Enriched Reality Developers Pvt Ltd vide licence deed dated March 6, 2014 and my son is in no way connected with the said club in any capacity or in any manner whatsoever."
The magazine had alleged that because the judge's son had a stake in the said club, it operated beyond the scheduled closure time in the night without inviting any penal action from police.
In the order, the judge said: "In the light of the above, I am of the considered view that the publishing house namely E N Communication Pvt Ltd, Rajashri Rai (managing director) for E N Communications Pvt Ltd, Vinay Rai (director), Inderjit Badhwar (editor-in-chief), Ramesh Menon (managing editor), Shonha John (deputy managing editor), Vishwas Kumar (senior editor), Girish Nikam (contributing editor), Meha Mathur (associate editor), Prabir Biswas (deputy editor), Somi Das (assistant editor), R Parvathy (sub-editor), Anil Shakya (photographer), Cirrus Graphics Pvt ltd and Raju Sarin (publisher) have committed gross criminal contempt of court.
"Accordingly, I issue notices to all the aforesaid persons... Since I have issued notices of criminal contempt against the noticee (respondents), the matter shall be placed before the roster bench dealing with criminal contempt after obtaining orders from the Chief Justice."
"With a view to prevent any further onslaught on my image and the image of judiciary, I direct the respondents to stop publishing and circulating the said edition forthwith", he said.
"I also direct the commissioner of police to immediately seize and confiscate the entire stock of this edition from all offices of the aforesaid publishing house whether located in Delhi or elsewhere as per the information given in the magazine itself and from the printing press of Cirrus Graphics Pvt Ltd, publishers on behalf of E N Communications Pvt Ltd," he ordered.
"I also direct that no news containing this matter shall be published, appear, transmitted, communicated or aired in any manner or whatsoever in the print media or the electronic media or worldwide web/internet, emails, blogs and etc," he said.
On the content of the report in the magazine, the judge said: "It is beyond my comprehension to gauge as to what objectives and at whose motivation and agenda such a scandalous, defamatory article has been published, but that there is no doubt in my mind that one of the objective appears to be to damage, discredit me and my family and above all to bring into disrepute the judiciary as a whole for some ulterior motives. Such an irresponsible, reckless and contemptuous article is bound to shatter the faith of the common man in the administration of justice," he said in his eight-page order.