- (1.) The matter before us arises out of a publication in the Indian Express newspaper dated 13th December, 1977. Some people perhaps believe that attempts to hold trials of everything and everybody by publications in newspapers must include those directed against the highest Court of Justice in this country and its pronouncements. If this is done in a reasonable manner, which pre-supposes accuracy of information about a matter on which any criticism is offered, and arguments are directed fairly against any reasoning adopted, I would, speaking for myself, be the last person to consider it objectionable even if some criticism offered is erroneous. In Bennett Coleman and Co. v. Union of India, 1973-2 SCR 757 at pp. 828-29 : (AIR 1973 SC 106 at pp. 149-50). I had said (at p. 828 of SCR) : (at p. 149 of AIR) : "John Stuart Mill, in his essay on "Liberty", pointed out the needs for allowing even erroneous opinions to be expressed on the ground that the correct ones become more firmly established by what may be called the 'dialectical' process of a struggle with wrong ones which exposes errors. Milton, in his "Areopagitica" (1644) said : "Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously be licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; whoever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter .... Who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, no stratagems, no licensings to make her victorious; those are the shifts and defences that error makes against her power......' Political philosophers and historians have taught us that intellectual advances made by our civilisation would have been impossible without freedom of speech and expression. At any rate, political democracy is based on the assumption that such freedom must be jealously guarded. Voltaire expressed a democrat's faith when he told an adversary in arguments: I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it'. Champions of human freedom of thought and expression throughout the ages, have reallied that intellectual paralysis creeps over a Society which denies, in however subtle a form, due freedom of thought and expression to its members. Although our Constitution does not contain a separate guarantee of Freedom of the Press, apart from the freedom of expression and opinion contained in Art. 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution yet, it is well recognised that the Press provides the principal vehicle of expression of their views to citizens. It has been said 'Freedom of the Press is the Ark of the Covenant of Democracy because public criticism is essential to the working of its institutions. never has criticism been more necessary than today, when the weapons of propaganda are so strong and so subtle. But, like other liberties, this also must be limited."
(2.) I find, however, that goes distortions of what was actually held by this Court in what is known as the Habeas Corpus case (Additional District Magistrate, Jabalpur v. S. Shukla AIR 1976 SC 1207) are being made presumably to serve ulterior objects. Some of these distortions have been exposed by me in a separate statement of detailed reasons which place on record my difference of opinion with the order ultimately passed by a majority in this Court upon a case resulting from a news item published in the Times of India recently. I have, unfortunately, now to take notice of a much milder publication in the Indian Express newspaper in which the following sentence occurs about the supposed code of judicial ethics named wrongly to have been drafted by some Judges of the Supreme Court: "So adverse has been the criticism that the Supreme Court Judges, some of whom had prepared the draft code, have disowned it".
(3.) Judges of this Court were not even aware of the contents of the letter before it was sent by me as Chief Justice of India to Chief Justices of various High Courts suggesting, inter alia, that Chief Justices could meet and draft a code of ethics themselves or through a Committee of Chief Justice so as to prevent possible lapses from the path of rectitude and propriety on the part of Judges. The error of the assumption that Judges of the Supreme Court had any hand in drafting a code which I could have had at the back of my mind when I sent my suggestions to Chief Justices of High Courts was pointed out to the Editor of the Indian Express in a letter sent by the Registrar of this Court. No question of disowning the supposed code by any judge could, in the circumstances, arise. And, I had never "disowned" the suggestions made by me. The Registrar of this Court, therefore, wrote to inform the Editor of the mis-statement which ought to have been corrected. In reply, the registrar received a letter from the Editor showing that the contents of my letter of Chief Justices of High Courts, which were confidential, were known to the Editor. Instead of publishing any correction of the misstatement about the conduct of Judges of this Court, the Editor offered to publish the whole material in his possession, as though there was an issue to be tried between the Editor of the newspaper and this Court and the readers were there to try it and decide it.;