HC finds advocate guilty of contempt of court charges

The Madras High Court has held a Madurai-based advocate guilty of the charges of contempt framed against him, observing that the behaviour of "the contemnor has grown from bad to worse..."
Hearing a suo motu contempt petition against Peter Ramesh Kumar, a division bench of justices V Ramasubramanian and K Ravichandra Baabu said, "We accordingly hold the contemnor guilty of the criminal charges of contempt framed against him on February 4."
The bench directed him to appear before it on February 22 to decide on the quantum of punishment and posted the matter to that date.
On his part, the advocate appeared before the bench and filed a memo to the effect denying all charges and describing them as "motivated, prejudiced and concocted".

The bench said, "There is no categorical denial by the contemnor of his misbehavior in open court and the challenge he threw against the honourable judges who initiated the contempt."
"The attitude of the contemnor, as we have observed in our earlier orders, is one of aggravating the contempt. Even today, he went on shouting in open court, raising irrelevant issues and accusing the court. In fact, the behaviour of the contemnor has grown from bad to worse, whenever the contempt was listed."

"Even when we were dictating orders today, he kept on interrupting. We have not recorded all his outbursts, as they tantamount to scandalisation of the entire judiciary and also due to the fact that this contempt is confined to what happened in open court, on September 16, as recorded by two learned judges of this court, in their order" on that date.

"Therefore, we have no alternative except to hold that the contemnor is guilty of the charges framed against him..."
The Madurai bench of the high court had already initiated suo motu criminal contempt of court proceedings against Peter, former president of the Madurai unit of the High Court Advocates Association, for allegedly disrupting the court proceedings on September 16 last and challenging the court to act against him.