Judgment:
The Court : The alleged contemnors have taken a technical stand which, however undesirable it may be, cannot be addressed in this quasi-criminal jurisdiction. There is a sense of propriety and the awareness of the extent of authority of Court that a Judge must be mindful of for the majesty of this institution to be upheld.
Evidently, the officers of the concerned nationalized bank and the individual contemnors have no regard for such things. The order which is said to have been defied is one passed at the final hearing of a petition under Article 226 of the Constitution.
The writ petition was allowed in circumstances which need to be briefly noticed. The writ petitioner company was required by the respondent bank to clear its dues to the bank for no apparent reason that had been proffered by the bank.
The writ petitioner company availed of credit facilities from another bank on the strength of a certificate issued by the respondent bank to clear this banks dues and this bank issued a statement evidencing that there were no dues in the relevant account.
The respondent bank thereafter refused to hand over the title deeds or other related documents on the ground that some other concerns which were, according to the respondent bank, associated with the writ petitioners had defrauded the respondent bank at its other branches. It was this matter which was in issue in the writ petition and it was answered in favour of the writ petitioners.
The operative part of the order reads as follows: WP No.485 of 2009 succeeds. A writ of mandamus do issue commanding the respondent bank to forthwith return the title deeds deposited by the petitioner company to such company. There will be no order as to costs. The contempt proceedings were taken out shortly after the writ petition was allowed by the order dated August 24, 2009.
There is an order dated September 9, 2009 that was passed in the contempt proceedings. The order noticed that an ad interim order had been declined by the Appellate Court in the appeal arising out of the order dated August 24, 2009 and recorded a prayer made on behalf of the alleged contemnors that the matter should be adjourned to enable the bank to approach the Supreme Court.
The order dated August 24, 2009 was upheld in appeal and, following special leave to appeal being granted, the consequent civil appeal has since been dismissed by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court judgment of July 30, 2010 records, inter alia, as follows:
16)In the light of the above conclusion, we are unable to accept the claim of the appellant-Bank and on the other hand, we are in entire agreement with the direction issued by the learned Single Judge affirmed by the Division Bench. Consequently, the appeal of the Bank is dismissed.
The appellant-Bank is directed to return the title deeds deposited by the respondent-Company within a period of two weeks from today.. The acts of contempt detailed in the cause title, body and the prayers relating to the contempt petition indicate that the alleged contemnors have acted in wilful derogation of the order dated August 24, 2009 by not returning the security documents and by not handing over the no-dues certificate and a no-objection certificate pertaining to the relevant account.
Before issuing a rule - since that may amount to inconvenience at times of alleged contemnors being required to be present in Court - a copy of the petition was directed to be served on the alleged contemnors to enable them an opportunity to comply with the directions; so that they acted not only in terms of the order on its literal construction but also of the spirit of the order dated August 24, 2009 as upheld up to the Supreme Court. The stand taken by the alleged contemnors is that the order dated August 24, 2009 made a specific direction requiring the respondents to the writ petition to return the documents of title. The alleged contemnors say that the documents of title have been returned to the petitioners herein and, more than that, the alleged contemnors were not required to do anything.
The substance of the submission is that there has been neither any wilful nor any deliberate violation of the order dated August 24, 2009 since the bank had returned the title deeds or security documents to the writ petitioners.
The petitioners say that it is inconceivable that a nationalized bank or its officers would take such a stand. They submit that the order dated August 24, 2009 allowed the writ petition and the opening sentence of the operative part said as much.
They contend that the subsequent sentence in the operative part of the order should be seen in context and should not be allowed to limit the extent of the order to the return of the security documents only. In this quasi-criminal jurisdiction it is primarily the letter of the order which has to be seen for a case of wilful and deliberate violation of an order to be made out. There is absolutely no doubt that what the order dated August 24, 2009 required was that the respondent bank should make over all security documents and other papers necessary for closing the account with the petitioners and to enable the petitioners to avail of similar services elsewhere.
The order did not comment on the independent claim that the respondent bank said that it had against the petitioners; but it is very clear in that it required the banker-constituent relationship to be brought to an end qua the writ petitioner company and that it required the bank to hand over the security documents as a token of the bank not having any claim in respect of the relevant account against the writ petitioner company.
What the Court failed to anticipate was the intransigent stand that has now been taken by a bank that answers to the description of State within the meaning of Article 12 of the Constitution. The Court should also have taken into account that there are stubborn officers who man this nationalized bank who ought to have been specifically directed to issue a no-objection certificate, no-dues certificate and other like documents. The alleged contemnors say that the bank has instituted proceedings before the appropriate Debts Recovery Tribunal for recovering the money taken by the petitioners in connivance with their associates. Those proceedings may continue uninhibited by the order dated August 24, 2009; but the pendency of those proceedings cannot stand in the way of the order of August 24, 2009 being given a proper meaning and being followed.
Constrained as the Court is in this extra-ordinary jurisdiction, which should be sparingly exercised and only to uphold the majesty and dignity of this institution in the Constitutional scheme of things, it cannot be said that there has been a deliberate or willful violation of the order dated August 24, 2009 since such order did not specifically direct the other things to be done of which the petitioner now complains. But were this Court authorized to receive a separate action, the consequence would have been different and rather severe for both the bank and its recalcitrant officers.
CC No.175 of 2009 is dismissed with liberty to the petitioners to take appropriate steps. There will be no order as to costs.
Urgent certified photocopies of this order, if applied for, be supplied to the parties subject to compliance with all requisite formalities.