The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of Section 7 of the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, and the application of the Fourth Exception to Section 499 of IPC in determining defamation cases.

1. This Criminal Application filed under Section 482 of the Cri.P.C. prays for quashing and setting aside the process issued against the applicant by the learned Judicial Magistrate, First Class at Pune in Criminal Case No.1912 of 1997 and while admitting this application, by way of interim relief, the proceedings in the said Criminal Case were stayed by this court vide order dated 6/3/1998.

2. The applicant is the Chairman of the Indian Express Group and also Managing Editor of a Marathi daily by name "Loksatta". The said newspaper has more than one editions, as at present, namely, Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Ahmednagar and Delhi and each of these editions has a separate Resident Editor. All the editions have at the apex level an Editor over and above the individual Resident Editors. On or about 10/12/1997 the applicant received the summons (without a copy of the complaint) to appear on 19/12/1997 before the learned JMFC, A.C. Court, at Pune in Criminal Case No. 1912 of 1997. The said case was filed by the present respondent no.2 on or about 16/7/1997 and on verification, the learned Magistrate had issued process under Section 500 read with Section 34 of IPC.

3. It was stated in the said complaint by the respondent no.2 that on 20/5/1997 a news item was ublished in the Pune Edition of "Loksatta" newspaper alleging defamatory and malicious imputations against the complainant and by the said publication the accused had acted to defame him. The present applicant was impleaded as accused no.1 while accused nos.2 to 4 were arraigned in the said complaints on the grounds that accused no.2 Shri George Varghese was the Printer and Publisher, accused no.3 Shri Aroon Tikekar was the Editor of all editions and accused no.4 Shri Anil Takalkar was the Resident Editor of Loksatta, Pune Edition and that by the said publication they had committed an offence punishable under Sections 500 to 502 read with Section 34 of IPC. As noted earlier, the learned Magistrate, on verification of the complaint, was pleased to issue process only for the offence punishable under Section 500 read with Section 34 of IPC. The accused nos.2 to 4 had filed an application at Exh.91 in Criminal Case No.1912 of 1997 praying for the same relief, namely, the recall of the order of process and the said application came to be rejected on 16/12/2000. Consequently, the accused nos.2 to 4 filed Criminal Revision Application No.18 of 2001 before the Sessions Court at Pune and the same was allowed by the learned 9th Additional Sessions Judge at Pune vide his judgment and order dated 2/1/2002. This order is a subject matter of challenge in Writ Petition Nos.974 and 975 of 2002 and the pendency of these petitions does not detain me from deciding this application on its own merits.

4. In support of his prayer for quashing the process order, the applicant states that he being the Chairman and Managing Editor was and is not responsible for the day to day reporting in the local editions and the same is done with the full knowledge and under the supervision of the Resident Editor at the local levels and the Editor at the Corporate level for all the editions. He further states that he is not responsible for the day to day reporting of news in any of the editions of Loksatta and the same function is that of the Resident Editor or Editor as the case may be. As he has no knowledge of the reports published in the local editions, he could not have been impleaded as an accused in the complaint filed by the respondent no.2. He has placed reliance on the provisions of Section 7 of the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867 (the Act of short) in support of his contentions that the person whose name was printed as an Editor or Resident Editor is responsible for the publication of news in the daily edition of the newspaper and a presumption has to be drawn that when the name of the Editor is specifically mentioned, such editor/resident editor is the person solely responsible and not the M