Man calls judge ‘public servant’

Mumbai: A judge of the Bombay high court has initiated suo moto contempt proceedings against a litigant after he used contemptuous language, asking him to “behave like a public servant”.

The judge considered the litigant’s words “you are a public servant and this court should behave like a public servant” as loud and disrespectful.

The judge also said that they were intended at lowering the dignity and authority of the court. The high court further barred the defendant from appearing in the court.

The incident took place in the court on Friday when Justice K.R. Shriram was hearing a notice of motion in which the court had appointed an architect mutually agreed upon by the plaintiff Vinod Gidwani and defendant Anil Gidwani to inspect a disputed property and ascertain whether it could be divided.

However, the defendant who had appeared in person before the court stated that he was submitting a decree with regard to the said property subject to certain conditions. But, when the court reminded him that no such conditions were mentioned in his notice of motion, he started shouting and told the court that it was being too technical.

Following the defandant’s outburst, the court said, “The conduct of defendant number 1, right from the beginning, has been rather offensive. He was disrespectful and contemptuous. Despite being told that his conduct was disrespectful and contemptuous and I will have to call the police to take him out if he did not conduct himself properly. Defendant number 1’s contemptuous response was ‘bolva, bolva’, which in English means ‘call, call’.”

Justice Shriram further said, “The language used, the tone and the manner in which it was expressed was calculated to insult, show disrespect, to overbear and overawe the court. In a situation such as this, in my opinion, the court has to take note of the conduct of defendant number 1 as contempt in the face of the court.” Hence the judge asked the registry to initiate suo moto contempt proceedings against defendant number 1 and list the matter before the appropriate court.