JUDGMENT

R.M. LODHA, CJI.

1. In the issue of Indian Express of August 13, 1990, an editorial was published bearing the caption "If shame had survived". The editorial reads as under:

"If shame had survived"

The legal opinion that the former Chief Justice of India, Mr. Y. V. Chandrachud, has given on the Kuldip Singh Commission's report is a stunning indictment. Succinct, understated to the point of being deferential, scrupulously adhering to facts and law, eschewing completely the slightest attribution of any motive to the Commission, the opinion is a model of rectitude.

Nothing in the report survives it "evidence" that it was agreed would not be pressed relied on as a fulcrum; evidence of the one witness who was the hub of the decisions wholly disregarded; indictments framed on "probable possibility", theories invented to read meanings into documents and the manifest, straightforward explanation ignored; the Commission itself as well as the energetic prosecutor himself declaring one day that neither had a shred of evidence which cast a doubt on Hegde and the very next day declaring a conclusion; refusing to common witnesses for cross-examination on the pretext that the Commission did no