Judgment of Three judge Bench in Prashant Bhushan’s case letting him off by imposing Re. 1 fine has again overruled the sentence in Re: Vijay Kurle’s case.

 

Judgment of Three judge  Bench in Prashant Bhushan’s case letting him off by imposing  Re. 1 fine has again overruled the sentence in Re: Vijay Kurle’s case.

Three Judge Bench observed that the  Prashant Bhushan’s offence is much graver than Vijay Kurle’s case as Vijay Kurle and Rashid Khan's  complaint was against individual judges and the Prashant Bhushans allegations are against whole institution.

Therefore the sentence if any in Vijay Kurle’s case should be much much less than Prashant Bhushan’s case.

Since the sentence of Prashant Bhushan is Re. 1, the sentence in Re: Vijay Kurle  should be very much less than Re. 1(One Rupee) which practically means no sentence at all.

In the contempt case intiated by the Supreme Court against Prashant Bhushan for his two tweets, a three judge bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra today sentenced him to pay a fine of Rupee One, which is to be deposited with the Supreme Court Registry within September 15. 

The same Bench in its  judgment dated 14.08.2020 (In Re: Prashant Bhushan 2020 SCC On Line SC 646) , after considering the case of Re: Vijay Kurle partly overruled the findings of smaller Bench of Justice Deepak Gupta  and observed in para 79 of the judgment, that the  offence committed by Mr. Prashant Bhushan is grave as compared to the case alleged in Re: Vijay Kurle, as the case of Vijay Kurle is concerned with the allegations against individual Judges and case of Mr. Bhushan is against the whole  institution of Supreme Court. It was observed as under;

“ Recently, the Supreme Court in the cases of National Lawyers Campaign for Judical Transparency and Reforms and others vs. Union of India and others 2019 SCC Online SC 411 and Re: Vijay Kurle & Ors (supra) has suo motu taken action against Advocates who had made scandalous allegations against the individual judge/judges. Here the alleged contemnor has attempted to scandalise the entire institution of the Supreme Court. We may gainfully refer to the observations of Justice Wilmot in R.v. Almon16 made as early as in 1765: (1765 Wilmot’s Notes 243 : 97 ER 94 )“…. And whenever men’s allegiance to the law is so fundamentally shaken, it is the most fatal and most dangerous obstruction of justice, and, in my opinion, calls out for a more rapid and immediate redress than any other obstruction whatsoever; not for the sake of the Judges, as private individuals, but because they are the channels by which the King’s justice is conveyed to the people.”

 

Therefore, even ignoring the other illegalities of the judgment in Re: Vijay Kurle , the sentence is also proved to be illegal and in view of the larger Bench judgment the sentence should be very much less than Re. 1(One Rupee) which practically means no sentence at all.

Art. 14 of the Constitution is for protecting equal treatment. In Nanha v. State 1992 SCC OnLine All 871, it is ruled as under;

 

“ In a subsequent case of Kallu v. State, 1989 AWC 65, the Supreme Court has specifically upheld the principle of consistency even in the matter of sentence. In Kallu's case (supra) two separate special leave petitions were filed by different accused against the same judgment of the High Court. One of the petition was dismissed by one Bench but the other special leave petition which was heard by another Bench, was partly allowed and the sentence was reduced from seven years’ R.I. to three years’ R.I. The Supreme Court reviewed its earlier order of dismissal of the first special leave petition and reduced the sentence from 7 years’ R.I. to three years’ R.I. Thus accused whose cases stand on the same footing are entitled to equal, treatment. In Ajai Hasia v. Khalid Muzib Sehravardi, 1981 (2) SCR 79: ((1981) 1 SCC 722 : AIR 1981 SC 487) the Supreme Court held that equality is directly opposed to arbitrariness. In a more recent case of Miss. Mohini Jain, reported in 1992 (4) JT (SC) 292 : ((1992) 3 SCC 666 : AIR 1992 SC 1858) the Supreme Court after considering large number of cases quoted with approval the following passage from the case of Ajai Hasia at page 1866:—

“Unfortunately in early stages of evolution of our Constitutional law Art. 14 came to be identified with the doctrine of classification… In Royapa v. State of Tamil Nadu this Court laid bare a new dimension of Art. 14 and pointed out that article has highly activist magnitude and it embodies a guarantee against arbitrariness.”