On 21 st September 2007, the Delhi High Court sentenced four people associated with the newspaper Mid Day to four months’ jail because of the role they played in publishing a report alleging that the family of
Mr. Sabharwal, former Chief Justice of India, had benefited greatly as a result of his judgements ordering sealing of thousands of shops and commercial establishments in Delhi last year. The High Court did not accept the journalists’ plea that their report was based on truth backed by hard evidence and that the allegations against the former Chief Justice should be probed by a competent body. Instead it punished them for their “unrepentant behaviour” in bringing the Supreme Court into “disrepute” by this report. People's Voice joins the thousands of journalists and publishers and democratic people of India in condemning this attempt by the judiciary to muzzle freedom of expression, particularly in respect of exposing wrong doings at the highest levels of the judiciary itself.

As the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) has been pointing out, the law of contempt is used as a stick to brow beat all attempts to seek accountability and transparency from the judiciary. In recent years, the judiciary has been increasingly used to push through orders which it would be politically difficult for the legislature to enact and for the executive to implement. Thus, for example a bench of the Supreme Court headed by Mr. Sabharwal ordered the sealing of tens of thousands of shops and commercial establishments in Delhi, disregarding the fact that they had been in existence for decades on end and were meeting the needs of, and providing livelihood to, literally millions of people in the city. In fact, it has been admitted by the authorities that the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) had failed to construct even half the required amount of commercial space required by the city, with the result that tens of thousands of small commercial establishments had no choice but to operate in residential areas in contravention of the “Master Plan”. It would have been politically next to impossible for the Delhi government to order the sealing itself, since the people would be up in arms and defeat the government of the day in the next election.

Former Chief Justice Sabharwal's sons, it was revealed by Mid Day and corroborated by further investigation by the CJAR, were in partnership with developers of shopping malls and commercial complexes. As a result of the sealing drive, many of those whose establishments had been sealed had to book space in such shopping malls and complexes, the rentals and prices of which had sky – rocketed as a result of the sealing drive! Thus Sabharwal's orders directly benefited his sons’ businesses. And the journalists of Mid Day have been punished by the High Court with imprisonment for bringing this truth to light!

On the day of the sentencing by the Delhi High Court, scores of journalists belonging to various publications held a demonstration outside the court. Several senior journalists and retired judges, as well as social and political activists and others, have spoken out against the muzzling of freedom of expression using the colonial law of contempt. The coming weeks are likely to see further protests and actions against the attempts by the higher levels of the judiciary, an arm of the bourgeois state, to insulate itself from scrutiny and criticism by the people.