7.3 Sanction for Contempt of Court

The punishment's menu: imprisonment (the contempt's criminal face — the short-term range); the fine; the combination; the civil face's compulsion (the detention until compliance — the purge); The mitigations: the apology's acceptance (the contrition — the apology tendered at the earliest opportunity as the mitigation, its acceptance within the court's discretion); the correction's publication; the genuine-inquiry's good faith; The procedure's discipline (the due process of contempt): the notice specifying the charge; the reply's opportunity; the hearing — the contempt court as prosecutor-and-judge in one, so the process's fairness carries the legitimacy; the suo motu initiation (the court's own motion — the Jana Aastha case's route, Unit 10: the report scandalising the Chief Justice; the Supreme Court's Department of Administration's complaint; the editors summoned under the court's contempt authority); The balance (the exam's critical paragraph): the contempt power's chilling effect on the press — the scandalising doctrine's world-wide retreat (the decriminalisation debates; the genuine-criticism protection) vs. the fair trial's real needs (the sub judice rule's retention); the method: punish the prejudicing publication narrowly, protect the reasoned criticism absolutely — the press as the courts' critic AND the process's guardian, not its saboteur. Exam Focus Long questions: (i) Contempt's meaning and concept + the civil/criminal division (the table's spine); (ii) The media's contempt exposure — scandalising + sub judice with the safe…