P (PLP)

Resuming his cross‑examination of Tuesday's prosecution witness, Mr. Abdur Rehman, retired Rehabilitation Tehsildar, the chief defence counsel, Mr. H.S. Suhrawardy, asked him what was the essential matter in a Khasra Girdawari. Witness: The essential matter in a Khasra Girdawari is the name of the proprietor, the name of the cultivator and the description of the crop in respect of every piece of land. Replying to another question witness said. It is correct that the particulars entered in the quadrennial Jamabandis only relate to every eighth harvest. The entry for Kharif 1947 was only the third harvest since the preparation of the previous Jamabandi. Question: Did you think you were doing anything wrong in rewriting the Khasra Girdawri? Answer: I did not think so because I was convinced that the respondent had never been in possession of the Iqbalnagar estate which was included in my Rehabilitation jurisdiction. Proceeding witness stated: I remember that Sir Francis Mudie came to Montgomery about the middle of September 1947. Raja Hassan Akhtar told me that the Governor wished that the Farrh should be given to Lady Sir Joginder Singh and he himself thought this was wrong because the property belonged to Pakistan, At this stage the counsel for the prosecution objected to the admissibility of such questions being asked. Witness, however, proceeded: Raja Hassan Akhtar also told me that the Farm should be managed by Government. I cannot say what capacity Riaz ul Hassan was filling when I saw him in Iqbalnagar in October and November 1947. UNDER INSTRUCTIONS Question: I put it to you that he was then acting as manager on behalf of the Deputy Commissioner? Answer: I heard that he was managing the estate on behalf of the Government. He did not say this thing to me. Question: I put it to you that Raja Hasan Akhtar did not order you to destroy the Khasra Girdawari and that you did it of your own accord? Answer: No. It was destroyed under his instructions. Question: Where and how was the Khasra Girdawari destroyed? Answer: At the Deputy Commissioner's house. The pages were torn up and handed to a chaprasi to be destroyed. This was outside the Deputy commissioner's house on the same day When the new Girdawari was taken to be shown to him, the old one was taken along with the new one and having received instruc tions to destroy the old one, we came outside the bungalow and destroyed it. The Khatauni Nehr was destroyed in the Tehsil office. Witness added: The relevant page of the Roznamcha was removed and destroyed a few days after the book was taken in possession by me. Defence counsel: Are you aware that a case was registered in Montgomery against all the officials of the district without exception under section 409, I. P. C.? Witness: I am not aware of that, but in March or April of this year the police came to me and said that I would either have to be an accused person or a witness in relation to the things which happened in the district. I said I was willing to tell them the truth and they could do what they liked. Witness continued: I visited the police in this connexion on to days. I was not kept there at night but on the intervening night I returned home at about midnight. When questioning me the Sub‑Inspector hail warrants in his possession and that I could be sent the Fort in certain contingencies as is usual with police. However, no violence was offered to me, nor was I required to depose according to their wishes. I was only asked to disclose. I knew no threat was offered to me at my two elder sons would be dismissed. I did, of course, mention to m, friends that I had been treated in a rough fashion by the Police,' Defence Counsel: As a result of these threats you decided that it was better to avoid these evils and give evidence as desired? Witness: No I am not conscious of having made any such decision. I was shown statements made by Abdul Ghani Patwari and Nasir Ali, H. V. C. and I read th3m through and finding that they were right I made my statement accordingly. Proceeding witness admitted that he wrote a letter to his Pir, namely, the Pir of Golra Sharif, about the way the police had treated witness. It was on March 25, 1949. Defence Counsel: You made a statement to a Magistrate under section 164, Criminal Procedure Code. You have also given evidence in a previous inquiry against Raja Hassan Akhtar. I put it to you that you have given evidence in these proceedings in accordance with what you said in your earlier statements out of fear that if you make a different statement you will be liable to prosecution for perjury? Witness: That is not correct. I stated the truth in my previous statements and I have told the truth here. CORRECTIONS To another question by the Chief Justice, witness replied left to myself, I would not have destroyed the several revenue documents or forged them. I was, however, to do this because Raja Hasan Akhtar had asked me to do it. EVERYONE SAID SO Re‑examining witness, Mr. Abdul Aziz Khan asked him You have said that Iqbalnagar was never allotted to the respondent. How do you say that? Witness: The Deputy Commissioner and every one else used to say this. Prosecution Counsel: When you say in your letter to the Pir of Golra Sharif that there was no dishonesty on your part in the matter of the revenue papers, what did you mean? Witness: What I meant was that the entire produce went to Government and there was no public loss or private gain to any one. " As this publication gave prominence to the letter of the 25th March 1949 alleged to have been written by Abdur Rahman to the Pir of Golra Sharif, and omitted all reference to the witness's cross‑examination by the prosecution counsel and Court questions to test the truth of the witness's assertion that the letter was in fact written by him an the date that it bore and was not secured from' him for the purposes of this case and the contents of the letter were inconsistent with the evidence given by the witness in Court., rule was issued to Muhammad Shafi, special representa tive of the Pakistan Times, who had supplied the copy of the letter to the newspaper, and to Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the editor and Syed Amir Hussain Shah, the printer and publisher of the Pakistan Times to show cause why they should not be committed for contempt. In response to these notices, all the three respondents have appeared and Mr. Mahmud Ali on their behalf has attempted to show Cause against their being dealt with for the alleged contempt. Faiz Ahmad Faiz states that he was out of Lahore from the 3rd to 13th of November 1949 in connection with the meeting of the Pakistan Government Standing Committee for Labour at Dacca and that the report which is alleged to constitute contempt was not examined by him and was published in his absence. He has, however, taken full responsibility for the publication by virtue of his being the editor of the paper and offered unqualified apology. Syed Amir Hussain Shah admits that he is the printer and publisher of the Pakistan Times but alleges that his duty is merely the assignment and distribution of business and that he does not examine anything before publication, except such matter as may be specially referred to him by the editor in charge. He adds that he has appointed a competent editor, ten graduate assistant editors and sub‑editors with experience of journalism and four local reporters headed by Muhammad Shafi. Like Faiz Ahmad Faiz, he accepts full responsibility for the publication as printer and publisher of the newspaper and offers apology if the Court finds that the charge of contempt has been made out. Muhammad Shafi admits that he contributed for publication the English translation of the letter which appears in the report of the proceedings above the A. P. P. report. He asserts that the letter in question was read out in Court and made an exhibit in the case and that he believed that the letter being a good newspaper material, its publication would not constitute any offence. He says that he did not supply a full report of the proceedings to the newspaper because a full report of the proceedings used to be supplied to the paper daily by the A. P. P. and he was under the impression that the report of the proceedings by that news agency would reproduce that portion of the cross -examination of Abdur Rahman which related to the contents and the date of writing and despatch of the letter. Muhammad Shafi also offers apology should the Court hold that contribution of the text of the letter for publication to the newspaper constitutes contempt. It may be conceded that the report of the proceedings published under the authority of the A. P. P is a correct reproduction of the text actually supplied by that agency to the newspaper. The representative of that agency has explained that as he did not reproduce in his report the text of the letter of 25th March 1949, he excluded from that report all reference to the questions put by the prosecution counsel and the Court relating to that letter. It may be mentioned here that in his letter to the Pir of Golra Sharif, Abdur Rahman had written that he had not antedated any documents but this sentence has been omitted from the text of the letter published on the authority of Muhammad Shafi. It has been explained by the sub‑editor responsible for the publication of this letter that the missing sentence in the report contained the word "antidate" and that since he could not understand what this word meant and was unable to find it in the dictionary, he deleted the whole sentence from the report. The position, therefore, is that the publication, if taken as a whole gives undue prominence to the letter of 25th March and omits from the report the answers to all questions which were put to the witness to test whether the letter was in fact written and despatched on the date that it bears. Further, the report omits the important admission by the witness that what he said in the letter about his not having antedated any document or done anything objectionable or improper in the matter of documents witness admits he was treated by police in rough manner" is definitely incorrect because in the course of his deposition the witness never alleged that he had been treated by the police in a rough manner. Fourthly, the letter paints the witness as a helpless and innocent victim of police torture who was being concealed by the police to make a false statement to their liking and Raja Hasan Akhtar as a servant of the millat who was being laid low in dust, whereas if the evidence given by the witness in Court were true, both he and Raja Hasan Akhtar had been guilty of serious criminal offences inasmuch as they colla borated in destroying and fabricating public records. Fifthly, the letter contains references to matters, for instance "cruel, inhuman, torturous and alarmist methods adopted by the police to bring respectable persons low", and many another matter concerning which the witness had not been questioned at all in Court and which did not constitute evidence in the case. It is, therefore, difficult to contend that the publication is not tenden tious or that it is a substantially correct report of the proceedings of 10th November. In considering whether the publication in question constitutes contempt, the matter has to be considered from a two‑fold aspect. As I have already mentioned, the publication consists of two portions: (1) the report by the special correspondent and (2) the report by the A. P. P. It is admitted that Muhammad Shafi did not give a full report of the proceedings and only chose for publication the letter which is alleged to have been written by Abdur Rahman to the Pir of Golra Sharif. Muhammad Shafi's responsibility, therefore; has to be considered only in regard to the publication of the letter because he is not responsible for the A. P. P. report which was sent for publication by a different agency. The question that arises for decision, so far as Muhammad Shift is concerned, is whether he was entitled to report for publication not the entire proceedings of the day but only the letter. He asserts that the letter was read in Court, but I and my brother distinctly remember that this lengthy document was not at all read in Court. After a preliminary question, the defence counsel merely put the letter to the witness and asked him whether he had written it and the witness replied in the affirmative. When I read the letter. I discovered in it the sentence in which the witness had alleged that lie had done nothing dishonest or objectionable in the matter of documents and that he had not antedated any docu ment. As this assertion in the letter was clearly contrary to the evidence given by the witness before us, and the defence counsel not put any specific portion of the letter to the witness, I confronted the witness with that portion of the letter, and the witness admitted that that assertion in the letter was true. Mr. Mahmud Ali's contention is that the letter having been made an exhibit in the case, Muhammad Shafi was entitled to report it for publication and that this act of his did not con stitute contempt because the publication did not have the effect of scandalizing the Court or of maligning any party or of affecting the decision of the Court, and in support of this argument he has referred us to certain authorities. In putting forward this argument he seems to have misapprehended the true position inasmuch as the essence of the charge against Muhammad Shafi is that he published the letter completely divorced from its context in the deposition of the witness and without caring to report those portions of the witness's deposition which had reference to it or to the matters which were men tioned in it. There is no warrant for the assumption made by Mr. Mahmood Ali that an act constitutes contempt only where it has the effect of scandalizing the Court or of maligning a witness or a party or of actually affecting the decision of the Court. Though several definitions have been attempted of contempt and the reports are full of what does or does not constitute contempt in each case, the only general rule deducible from the authorities on which a definition of contempt can be founded is that an act constitutes contempt if it is calculated to interfere, or has the tendency of interfering with the due course of justice. All publications the effect of which is to pre‑judge a material issue in the case before judgment is pronounced, or which have the tendency to create in the public mind a preconception about such issue, are contempt. Readers of newspaper reports of the proceedings of cases pending in Courts must naturally form some opinion about the merits of the case reported and if the proceedings are reported accurately and without any addition, suppression or misrepresentation, it would be impossible to contend that the publication amounts to contempt because it tends to create in the mind of its intelligent readers an opinion about the case. Such reports are published and read with that object and the more fact that they excite public opinion before‑ judgment is delivered is in no sense a contempt of the Court in which the proceedings take place. But if the report amounts to a comment or expression of opinion on matters subjudice or has the tendency to influence the readers' opinion on those matters by suppressing or misrepresenting material steps in the proceedings, it will then amount to an interference with the due course of justice by prejudicing mankind in respect of an issue and thus constitute contempt of the Court in which the proceedings are pending. In such a case it is the duty of the Court to take appropriate steps to prevent its proceedings from being misrepresented and where the Court in which the proceedings are pending is a High Court, it is its obvious duty to deal summarily with such cases. Minor omissions, even inaccuracies, will, o course, not justify such action, as it is not humanly possible for any reporter to take down or report the proceedings in extenso and in the very words in which they are taken on the official record. The decision to take or not to take action n each such case will therefore depend on the degree of the misrepresenta tion, and as a general rule the Court will not exercise this very extraordinary jurisdiction unless the misrepresentation is sub stantial and is calculated to cause misapprehension among the public in regard to a material issue in the case. In the present case, on the charge relating to the Iqbalnagar Farm, Abdur Rahman's evidence was very important because he had given a detailed account of the part that he took, under the direction of Raja Hasan Akhtar, in the destruction and fabrication of documents. The a truth of his evidence, therefore, was a vital, issue m the case, and the opinion of the readers of the newspaper report of the Proceedings about the value of his evidence was bound to be influenced by the manner in which his statement was obtained by the police. He, stated before us that he was not maltreated by the police, that he was with the police only for two days, having been detained by them for the intervening night up to midnight, and that the police offered him the choice of being a witness or an accused in the case. The letter, however, goes much further than this. It describes the witness as a helpless victim, who was being subjected to untold tortures to be compelled to make a false statement and to be a party to a conspiracy which some persons including police officers, were hatching for personal reasons. It further accuses the police in general of using all cruel, inhuman, torturous and alarmist methods with a view to bringing respectable persons low. To an intelligent reader of the Court's proceedings, therefore, it must have appeared to be a material question whether the evidence of Abdur Rahman given in Court about his being a party to the destruction, and fabrication of documents was true and the answer to it depended upon the nature of the influences which were working on the witness's mind when he made his statement to the police. If what was stated in the letter was true, namely, that the police had used all cruel, inhuman, torturous and alarmist methods to procure false evidence the readers' opinion about the truth of the witness's evidence was bound to be affected: So far,' therefore, as the report by Muhammad Shafi is concerned, it gave undue prominence to what the witness had stated about the police without making tire slightest reference to the witness's evidence in Court or to the material portions of his evidence in regard to the circumst ances in which this letter was alleged to have been written and the truth or otherwise of the allegations contained therein. If this article had appeared without the A. P. P: report it would have been impossible for anyone to contend that it did not constitute a very grave contempt of Court. It could not possibly be said to be a complete or substantially correct report of the proceedings and it undoubtedly suppressed the other side of the picture, i.e. the evidence given by the witness in Court Muhammad Shafi says that he relied on the A. P. P. to give a full report of the proceedings. But, he had no justification to make any such assumption, and if he intended to rely on the report of the A. P. P. it was his duty to see that such report was not only given but that it reproduced all the relevant circumstances in regard to this letter. He did neither of these things, and obtaining the letter from the defence counsel splashed it to the public. He says he considered this letter, to be "newsy" and we can only take this to mean that he was concerned in giving publicity only to one side of the matter, without bothering himself to report the other side of the picture. The contribution, therefore, was undoubtedly meant to excite sympathy for Abdur Rahman by painting him as a victim of police torture and to show that his evidence in Court was neither voluntary nor true. It can hardly be contended that this letter constituted substantive evidence in the case or that it could be treated as evidence of the matters which are mentioned therein unless the witness had deposed to those matters in Court. The letter, contains many a matter about which the witness was not questioned at all, and therefore the publication of the letter had the effect of displaying to the public matters which had not been made evidence in the case. The only specific portion of the letter to the incorrectness of which the witness had deposed in Court, has been omitted from it, and though now an explanation for this is being given, namely, that the sub‑editor could not find the word "antidate" in the dictionary and therefore decided to omit the sentence in which this word occurred, I cannot imagine that any sub‑editor worth the descrip tion on the staff of a paper like the Pakistan Times should not have been able to discover the correct word to replace the mis-spelt word. It appears to me that this omission was intentional because the witness had been specifically questioned whether the allegation in the letter that he had not antedated any documents was true, and he had admitted that it was not. Thus the omission was meant to provide an excuse for not reporting the witness's admission that the assertion by him in the letter that he had not antedated any documents was untrue. I have not the slightest doubt that Muhammad Shafi not only intentionally gave an in. complete and wholly misleading report of the proceedings, but also that he gave publicity to 'what appears to be his own view of the evidence of an important witness in the case. And if he has followed the proceedings of the case with some intelligence and without any bias, he did all this being conscious of the fact that the regularity or propriety of allotment of 221 rectangles of 1‑and in Chak No. 22/IL alleged to have been made in his favour by Raja Hassan Akhtar might itself become an issue in the case under Charge No IX. Muhammad Shafi has stated that the omission of that portion of the cross‑examination of the witness which related to the letter came to his notice on the following day and that he immediately required the Pakistan Times to supply the omission by reporting in its next issue that portion of the cross‑examination. It is tree that the missing cross‑examination was reported in the issue of the newspaper for the 12th November, but this was after we had discussed the matter in open Court at 10 o'clock and decided to issue the notice. As far at the other two respondents are concerned, namely, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the editor, and Syed Amir Hussain Shah, the printer and publisher, the contempt consists in their publishing a letter which was not substantive evidence in the case and omitting to publish those portions of the witness's evidence which were necessary to be considered in arriving at a conclusion whether the letter was written and despatched on the date that it bears or whether it was subsequently procured from the witness. Their act also therefore comes within the scope of the law of contempt. Their liability, however, is vicarious, as Faiz Ahmad Faiz being absent from Lahore did not personally supervise the issue of the paper in which the offending report was published and Syed Amir Hussain Shah is only concerned with the assignment and distribution of business among the members of the staff. We therefore take a lenient view of the offence which in their case is merely technical. Of Muhammad Shafi's conduct we take a graver view but since the incidence of fine on him is likely to be heavier than on the other two respondents, we consider that each of the three respondents should be required to pay a fine of Rs. 250 or to undergo simple imprisonment for one week in default of payment of fine. K. M. A. Order accordingly.