Balakrishnan

New Delhi, Feb. 21: The Supreme Court today publicly snubbed one of its judges for making “extraneous” comments in a judgment, but upheld his main ruling that makes a company management responsible for staff’s security.

Courts should not pass observations irrelevant to the case at hand because that “may lead to confusion in the minds of litigants, members of the public and the authorities”, a three-judge bench rebuked Justice Markandey Katju.

Justice Katju had recently inserted a clause on Uttar Pradesh law while ruling on an unrelated case. He and another judge were deciding whether Nasscom chief Som Mittal should be prosecuted for the failure of a Bangalore BPO, which he then headed, to provide security to a woman employee.

The two-judge bench approved prosecution but Justice Katju broke off to ask the Uttar Pradesh government to revive the provision of anticipatory bail in the state.

A bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan today set the suggestion aside as “non-binding”, saying: “Observations, recommendations and directions in paras 17 to 39 of the judgment do not relate to the subject matter.”

Justice Katju had a few months ago ruffled feathers by asking judges not to “overreach” their powers and encroach on the realms of governments and lawmakers. Today, it was the three-judge bench’s turn to use his comments on the Mittal case as an example to warn judges to exercise their powers responsibly.

“The law declared by this court is binding on all courts. All authorities in the territory of India are required to act in aid of it. Any interpretation of a law or a judgment, by this court, is a law declared by this court,” the bench said.

“The wider the power, (the) more onerous the responsibility to ensure that nothing is stated or directed in excess of what is required or relevant for the case, and to ensure that the court’s orders and decisions do not create any doubt or confusion… and that they do not conflict with any other decision or existing law.”

The bench noted that Justice Katju’s observation was “the expression of an expectation or hope by only one of the learned judges constituting the bench and not agreed to by the other”. Therefore, it ruled, the observation was “not a decision, order or direction of the court”.

“That being so, the directions issued to the secretary-general of the Supreme Court, state governments and Union territories, and recommendations to the government of UP in the ‘aside’ contained in paras 17 to 39 are not directions to be complied with.”

But the bench cleared Mittal’s prosecution under the Karnataka Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1961.

The state government had argued that the “management” of a company could not be exempt from prosecution for failing to ensure employees’ security. Mittal was the managing director of HP Global Soft Ltd when Pratibha Murthy was raped and killed in December 2005, by the driver of a car hired by the company.

At the most, Mittal will have to pay a fine. But he has been opposing prosecution on the ground that those in the company management could not be held responsible for such acts of omission.