JUDGMENT

BEG, C.J.I. :— 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 & Co. v. Union of India, 1973-2 SCR 757 at pp. 828-29. I had said (at p. 828 of SCR)

"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 democrats 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 SC:

"So adverse has been the criticism that the SC 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 a