ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Muhammad Tallal Chaudhry, who lost the recent election from Faisalabad’s NA-102 constituency, also lost his case in the Supreme Court on Thursday when he was convicted of committing contempt of court and awarded imprisonment — “till the rising of the court”.

A three-judge SC bench comprising Justice Gulzar Ahmed, Justice Sardar Tariq Masood and Justice Faisal Arab also imposed a fine of Rs100,000 on Mr Chaudhry who was present in the courtroom.

On June 28, his former cabinet colleague Daniyal Aziz was also awarded the same punishment by the apex court on contempt charges.

With the conviction, Mr Chaudhry has also been disqualified for five years under Article 63(1)(g) of the Constitution. The provision reads: “A person shall be disqualified from being elected or chosen a member of the parliament if he has been convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction for propagating any opinion or acting in any manner prejudicial to the ideology of Pakistan, or the sovereignty, integrity or security of Pakistan, or the integrity or independence of the judiciary of Pakistan or which defames or brings into ridicule the judiciary or the armed forces of Pakistan.”

The 10-page verdict authored by Justice Gulzar Ahmed said: “We are satisfied that the alleged contemnor has committed contempt of the court within the meaning of Article 204 of the Constitution, read with Section 3 of the Contempt of Court Ordinance 2003 and thus made himself liable for punishment.”

The court initiated the contempt proceedings when the SC registrar had on Feb 1 this year put up a note to Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, highlighting the speeches made by Tallal Chaudhry on Jan 24 and 27 at public gatherings which were also telecast by different television channels and published by newspapers. According to the note, the words used constitute interference with and obstruction of the process of the court as well as are aimed at belittling the stature of the apex court and prima facie amounted to contempt of court.

Justice Ahmed observed in the judgement that the court had closely looked and examined two transcripts of the speeches and apparently found that such utterances by Tallal Chaudhry amounted to abuse, scandalise and tend to bring the court into hatred, ridicule or contempt within the meaning of Article 204 of the Constitution and was substantially detrimental to the administration of justice.

Referring to the contention of Mr Chaudhry’s counsel, Kamran Murtaza, that even if the Supreme Court came to the conclusion that the two speeches of the alleged contemnor did make out a case of contempt, the court would not act in vengeance rather exercise judicial restraint, the verdict said: “We may note that though the alleged contemnor has taken this line of defence in this contempt proceeding against him but burden to prove the fact that these two speeches have been referred out of context, was upon him.”

It added that the contemnor had produced as many as five witnesses and even the general manager of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, but never bothered to produce before the court the entire text of his two speeches to show that they were out of context. Once the alleged contemnor had taken up the defence on a point that his two speeches had been referred to out of context, the burden was upon him to show and establish the same, which he failed to do, the judgement said.

Regarding the submission that the court ought to show judicial restraint, the verdict said the principle of judicial restraint was not a universal principle to be applied in each and every case. In order to show his unfaltering allegiance to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, it added, the contemnor had uttered words seriously prejudicing the office of the chief justice and the judges of the Supreme Court and ultimately the entire court as an institution and his utterances were not at all or within the ambit of the decency, morality and decorum but showed utter venom for which he himself had no cause of his own.

“The contemnor in his two speeches not only abused the judges of this court but has scandalised the court and did everything to bring the court into hatred, ridicule and contempt, which is substantially detrimental to the administration of justice and scandalises the court and tends to bring the court and judges of the court into hatred and ridicule,” the judgement said.

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2018