Complainant can later on sign complaint.

(Contempt Petition filed under section 12 of Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, to punish the respondent for wilful disobedience of the order of this Court in Crl.O.P.No.22322 of 2005 dated 24.08.2005.)

Order:

Learned Senior Counsel for the petitioner argued that when para 55 of the judgment in 2005(3) CTC 480 (Y.Vijayalakshmi @ Rambha ..vs.. Manickam Narayanan) envisaged that a complaint under section 138 of Negotiable Instruments Act shall be filed by the payee himself along with other conditions, the non-compliance of the first and foremost condition, namely, that "the complaint shall be signed by the payee himself", will not only make the complaint irregular; but also will show that the Magistrate, who has taken it on file, has committed wilful disobedience of the direction of the High Court, amounting to contempt.

2. The learned senior counsel would also rely upon AIR 1955 Allahabad 161 (Sessions Judge, Meerut ..vs.. City Magistrate, Meerut), wherein it was observed as follows:

"It is not for the superior courts to say under what law they have issued the directive. The subordinate courts should presume for the time being, unless the contrary appears, that the order is lawful. If it appears to them that the order is without jurisdiction, they may not comply with it but this will be at their own peril. If it turns out that the order was passed within jurisdiction they will be disobeying it at the cost of being punished for contempt of court. Even when they refuse compliance with an order passed without jurisdiction, they must do so in courteous language. Any discourtesy shown by them to a superior court is again bound to involve them in proceedings for contempt. No subordinate court is entitled to demand of the superior court the law under which the order has been passed before complying with it. They must find the law for themselves if they intend to question the order; otherwise they should strictly comply with it both in letter and in spirit. It must be understood by all concerned that any discourtesy or disobedience shown to the orders of superior courts will be visited by this Court with the severest penalties.

3. When the matter was posted for maintainability, the availability of prima facie case was also gone into. Suppose, if there is no prima facie case, there is nothing wrong in holding that the contempt petition is not maintainable.

4. Mr.Ram Mohan, learned senior counsel for the petitioner was heard in that regard. It was brought to his notice para 26, 54, 34, 36 and 40 of my judgment reported in 2005(3) CTC 480, wherein several case laws including

M/s.MMTC Ltd., and another ..vs.. M/s.Medchl Chemicals and Pharma (P) Ltd., (AIR 2002 SC 182),

Ramesh ..vs.. Ganeshchandra and others (2004 (2) Bankmann 464),

Revulu Subba Rao ..vs.. I.T. Commissioner (AIR 1956 SC 604) and

Ruby Leather Exports ..vs.. K.Venu (1994 (1) Crimes 820 (Madras)

were relied upon.

5. The resultant observation found in para 55 of my judgment was only based upon the principles enunciated in the above-cited cases. That is why reliance was placed upon the above mentioned paragraphs in the above case laws as indicated earlier.

6. A careful perusal of MMTC's case (cited supra), it is understandable, the non-signing of the complainant in the complaint is a curable defect and the complainant can later on sign the complaint, whereby it would become clear that the complainant should sign the complaint. The same proposition was followed in Ruby Leather Exports case, which was mentioned in para 40 of my judgment. Thus, there are two limbs. One is that the complainant should sign the complaint; and another is that the non-signing of the complaint by the complainant is a curable defect.

7. Although it was not explicitly mentioned in the resultant para 55 of my judgment, by reading of the entire judgment, it would be made clear that the resultant direction was arrived at based upon the above mentioned case laws wherein the principle was laid that normally the comp