Jayarajan to be jailed for contempt of court

KOCHI: CPM leader M V Jayarajan has become the first politician in Kerala to be jailed for contempt of court. CPM veteran E M S Namboodiripad, former minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty and KC(B) leader R Balakrishna Pillai were earlier found guilty in contempt of court cases but were not imprisoned.“There is no doubt that Jayarajan is the first politician to be sent to jail. Mathai Manjooran, leader of the Kerala Socialist Party, was earlier jailed for one month as an editor for publishing a contemptuous article in his Kerala Prakasham magazine,” senior advocate M K Damodaran said. Jayarajan, the third communist leader to be chargesheeted for a contempt of court case, was on Tuesday sentenced to six months of simple imprisonment and a fine of `2,000 for making derogatory remarks against judges.EMS, during his stint as chief minister, was pulled up by the High Court for stating that the class character of Indian Judiciary was to protect the interest of Indian bourgeois. The High Court had then imposed a fine of `1,000 or simple imprisonment for one month. However, then Supreme Court reduced the sentence to a fine of `50.In a press conference on November 9, 1967, EMS made some critical remarks on the Judiciary referring to it as “an instrument of oppression” and the judges as “dominated by class-hatred, class prejudices” and instinctively favouring the rich against the poor. He also stated that the judiciary worked “against workers, peasants and other sections of the working classes” and “the law and the system of Judiciary essentially served the exploiting classes.”In 2007, the then local self-government minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty was found guilty of contempt of court for a controversial speech at the annual function of the employees union of Calicut University in Kozhikode. However, he tendered an unconditional apology and escaped imprisonment. The Supreme Court had closed suo motu contempt proceedings initiated by the Kerala High Court against this speech allegedly denigrating the Judiciary.In 1985, the High Court had admonished R Balakrishna Pillai, then a minister, for his “Punjab model speech”.A case was initiated against Pillai for his speech at a public meeting in which he incited the people to resort to terrorism and to wage war against the Union of India on the “Punjab model” to achieve their objectives.