Willful disobedience of a court order requires knowledge of the order; lack of such knowledge negates contempt.

JUDGMENT :

A.Y. KOGJE, J.

1. Rule. Learned advocate Manan Bhatt waives service of rule on behalf of respondent Nos.1 and 2 and learned advocate Mr. Amit K. Dave, waives service of rule on behalf of respondent Nos. 3 and 4. All these Misc. Civil Applications are arising out of the same cause of action and hence, with the consent of learned advocates for the parties, all the applications are taken up for joint hearing. The facts are extracted from the lead matter i.e. Misc. Civil Application No. 2219 of 2023.

2. This petition is filed alleging contempt of the Court as allegedly the respondents have disobeyed the order dated 05.05.2023 passed by the Gujarat Revenue Tribunal (hereinafter referred to as “Tribunal” for short) in Appeal No. 23 of 2022. The applicants also pray for purging of the contempt by cancelling a lease deed No. 6447 of 2023 dated 09.05.2023 registered with Office of the Sub-Registrar, Surat-5. This lease deed pertains to property in question bearing survey No. 67 of Town Planning Scheme No. 8, Umarvada with final plot No. 50.

3. The aforesaid property is in the name of Surat Parsi Panchayat Funds and Properties Trust (hereinafter referred to as “Trust” for short) of which the respondents Nos.1 and 2 are the trustees and respondent Nos.3 and 4 are the tenants of the trust properties. The trust had filed an application seeking permission under Section 36 of the Gujarat Public Trust Act (hereinafter referred to as “the Act” for short) for executing a fresh lease deed in favour of respondent Nos.3 and 4, which came to be granted.

4. The applicants herein belonging to the Parsi Community claim to be beneficiaries of the trust and in that capacity claim to be interested in protecting interest of the trust. They are also the objectors in the application under Section 36 of the Act which came to be ultimately allowed by the Charity Commissioner.

5. The applicants did challenge the order of the Charity Commissioner by filing a Special Civil Application before this Court, however, this Court passed an order relegating the applicants to the remedy available in the form of an appeal before the Tribunal.

6. It appears that all these people who had objected to the application under Section 36 of the Act, 13 of them preferred appeals before the Tribunal, where the Tribunal ultimately passed an order dated 05.05.2023, staying the permission granted by the Joint Charity Commissioner by his order dated 08.03.2022.

7. It is the case of the applicants that immediately thereafter i.e. on 09.05.2023, lease deed came to be executed by respondent Nos.1 and 2 in favour of respondent Nos.3 and 4 and this was a willful disobedience of the order dated 05.05.2023.

8. Learned advocate Mr. Mehul Sharad Shah appearing for the applicants have argued that the Charity Commissioner by passing an order dated 08.03.2022 had granted permission required under Section 36 of the Act for dealing with the trust property in favour of respondent Nos.3 and 4, but when by an order dated 05.05.2023 the permission thus granted under Section 36 of the Act was stayed by the Tribunal, and therefore, it was not open for respondent Nos.1 and 2 to act contrary to the stay granted by the Tribunal.

8.1 It is submitted that though the respondents were aware of the order passed by the Tribunal and that there was no sanction/permission in existence to deal with the trust property, in a great hurry and immediately after the order of stay granted, on 09.05.2023 the lease deed was executed and thus it was directly against the order of the Tribunal amounting to contempt of the order of the Tribunal.

8.2 Learned advocate has argued that the fact that the respondents were aware of these proceedings, is evident from the fact that after the Tribunal issued the notice, the respondents had appeared through their advocates and the advocate had given a solemn assurance to the Tribunal in not to deal with the property pending the proceedings before the Tribunal. Attention is drawn to document