HC directs single woman and her child to pay Rs 1 lakh for social cause

Hyderabad: The division bench of the Telangana High Court comprising Justice P. Naveen Rao and Justice Nagesh Bheemapaka ordered a woman and her two children to contribute Rs 1 lakh to a social cause — Sri Saraswathi Shishu Mandir, Bhadrachalam  — for their deliberate and wilful disobedience of the court.

The court was about to sentence the woman to prison for contempt but let her off after she pleaded that her minor children were living abroad. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 2,000 fine on the mother and her children, totalling Rs 6,000.

In a land dispute between two private parties, A. Vijay Raj Soni and Bedley Sujay Kumar, now deceased, the court had given injunction orders and restrained Sujay Kumar’s wife and their children not alienate the property or create third party interest.

Despite this, they registered the sale deed which was ex-facie illegal in the teeth of injunction orders. Challenging this, a contempt petition was filed and it was proved that the woman and her children were guilty. When the court decided to punish her with imprisonment , she offered an apology.

The bench observed that ther conduct could not be ignored by accepting the apology and reminded of the observations of the apex court in ‘Ram Autar Shukla vs Arvind Shukla,’ that dropping contempt proceedings accepting an apology would be a permission for the flagrant abuse of judicial process.

The bench then directed the contemnors to pay Rs 1 lakh to a social cause and imposed the fine and directed her to pay it within 15 days.