Kerala High Court Closes Suo Motu Contempt Proceedings Against High Court Bar Association President

The contempt proceedings were initiated after now-retired Justice Mary Joseph sent a letter to the Chief Justice disapproving of Shenoy's conduct in her court. The Division Bench of Justice Devan Ramachandran and Justice B. Snehalatha noted that Shenoy was not given a copy of the letter.

A Division Bench of the High Court had earlier decided on some of the objections raised by the advocate. However one of these objections – that the contempt proceedings cannot be proceeded with as he was not provided with the letter written by Justice Joseph along with notice of the contempt – was not decided by the Bench.

The present division bench ruled that the said omission was fatal to the proceedings.

It observed that Rule 9 (1) of the Contempt of Court (High Court of Kerala) Rules prescribes that every petition, reference, information or direction shall be placed for preliminary hearing before the appropriate Bench. Rule 9(2)(b) says that the notice shall be accompanied by the copy of the petition, reference, information or direction and annexures. The Court noted that the word “shall” is used in both of these circumstances and therefore it has to be strictly complied with.

“… when the word used is “shall” as we stated above, we cannot construe a situation where there can be an exception to it in any manner”, the Court observed orally.

The Court relied on the decision of the Supreme Court in Muthu Karuppan v Parithi Ilamvasthuthi (2011) wherein it was held that the contempt proceedings being quasi criminal in nature, any deviation from the prescribed rules must be considered fatal to the proceedings.

Senior Counsel Adv. Sanal Kumar who was assisting the Court submitted that an initial obvious mistake which goes to the root of initiation of jurisdiction cannot be rectified later.

On these observations, the Court closed the case.

Case Title: Suo Moto v Yeshwanth Shenoy

Case No.: Con.(Crl) 2 of 2023