Non compliance of Impractical Court orders can not be termed as contempt.

Summary-In this post we’ll study about how implementing party cannot be subject to contempt of court for non-compliance of a judicial order on account of practical difficulties.

Contempt of Court Punjab Haryana High Court Chandigarh
Contempt of Court Punjab Haryana High Court Chandigarh

No contempt if order cant be followed : HC

In this post we’ll study about how implementing party cannot be subject to contempt of court for non-compliance of a judicial order on account of practical difficulties.

After hearing a review plea in a case where the authorities failed to provide CCTV footage of an incident that took place in district court because of automatic provision of erasing of the footage after 20 days

Facts of the case-:

In this case, Ashish, a resident of Chandigarh was reportedly assaulted on November 20, 2015 at district and sessions court Faridabad, and a DDR was recorded by the local police on his complaint.

According to him, his wife was posted at the districts and sessions court Faridabad, and he was assaulted at her instance so that he may not come again to pursue the case filed against her. The incident was stated to have been captured on CCTV and it was alleged in the complaint that the involvement of local staff among the assailants at the instance of his wife was highly probable. On December 26, 2015 he had sought information under RTI from public information officer of the sessions court Faridabad provide CCTV footage.

ALSO READ- CONTEMPT OF COURT CHANDIGARH PANCHKULA MOHALI

Legal Standpoint-:

The court heard the plea for review for obtaining the footage where the victim was made subject to brutalization and was reportedly assaulted at district and sessions court and court ordered for CCTV footage for the knowledge of the entire incident but due to the provision of automatic removal of footage after 20 days, the footage couldn’t be made available as per the orders passed by the court and authorities failed to provide CCTV and after knowing that it wasn’t the fault of authorities but instead it was unforeseeable consequence of the no-retrieval of the footage which can’t be considered as contempt of court as there was no deliberation of the footage removal on the part of the authorities. Also, court eases up over practical difficulties by loosing thick line between the court and the parties by non-compliance of the order passed by this court would in itself not render the respondents liable for the proceeding under the contempt of the court act as the order cannot be compiled with practically and therefore cannot be considered as contempt of court.

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Legal opinion-:

Article 129 and 215 of the Constitution of India empowers the Supreme Court and High Court respectively to punish people for their respective contempt. Section 10 of The Contempt of Courts Act of 1971 defines the power of the High Court to punish contempt of its subordinate courts.

Contempt of court can either be civil contempt or criminal contempt. Civil contempt means wilful disobedience of any judgment, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court, or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court. In this specific case there was no deliberate intention of wilful disobedience of the authorities and it was circumstantial in its entirety and there was no breach on the part of the authorities.

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This post is written by Prerana Yadav

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