Thursday, September 21 2006 11:18 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: In a relief to former Navy Chief R H Tahiliani, the Supreme Court yesterday (Sept 20,2006) stayed the contempt proceedings and arrest warrant issued against him by a court in Jammu and Kashmir in a defamation case.

Admiral Tahiliani's petition challenging the validity of the orders was mentioned by advocate Prashant Bhushan before a Bench comprising Justice B N Agrawal, Justice P P Naolekar and Justice L S Panta, which issued notice to the Jammu and Kashmir Government seeking its response on the incident of suo motu cognizance of defamation proceeding initiated by the Magistrate.

The Judicial Magistrate, Class I, Kangan, has taken a suo motu cognizance of defamation case against Admiral Tahiliani, Chairman of Transparency International India and Bhaskar Rao, Drector of Centre for Media Studies (CMS) and had directed them to personally appear before it.

The Bench also stayed the proceedings against Rao.

Transparency International in alliance with CMS had conducted the India Corrpution Study 2005 in which it had made some adverse remarks against the judiciary.

The Suo-motu proceedings were initiated against Tahiliani and Rao after two articles in this regard were published in some local newspapers.

While seeking quashing of the contempt proceedings and issuance of bailable warrants by the Magistrate, Tahiliani's counsel Prashant Bhushan said the orders were totally arbitrary and invalid and directly impinge liberty of the former Admiral.

He said no subordiante court has power or jurisdiction to initiate any contempt proceedings and it can only refer the case of criminal contempt to the High Court which was not done by the Magistrate.