Supreme Court: In a criminal appeal against Bombay High Court’s decision High Court of Judicature at Bombay on its Own Motion v. Vineeta Srinandan, 2025 SCC OnLine Bom 1398, whereby, the present accused was convicted for contempt of Court for circulating a circular referring to Supreme Court and High Court Judges as “dog mafia”, the Division Bench of Vikram Nath and KV Viswanathan, JJ. issued notice and stayed the operation of the impugned judgment passed by the High Court.
Background
In a petition before the High Court, inter alia challenging Rule 20 of the Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023, in the context of stray dogs, an Intervention Application was moved against serious actions affecting her basic human rights. In the proceedings of such application, the petitioner therein placed on record an affidavit pointing out objectionable materials issued by the contemnor, namely, a publication/circular dated 29-01-2025 circulated by the contemnor in the residential colony of the petitioner. The High Court said that by such a circular, the contemnor made serious insinuations against the High Court and the Supreme Court Judges.
The High Court issued a suo motu criminal contempt proceeding against the contemnor for writing the material of such nature, which scandalises and lowers the dignity and authority of the Court, as also interferes in the administration of justice.
The circular in question stated the following:
How Democracy is being crushed by Judicial System?
The entire country has a stray dog menace, and most of the urban residential societies in class A cities are struggling to fight this dog feeder’s mafia spread across the country. This is such a huge well-established network of trained professionals who have a very strong presence in the Judicial system too. So much so that if affected societies want to show videos or photos of the dog attacks, show information of fake cases filed by dog feeders, or show videos showing training of feeders where they are training their female members to file fake molestation cases against people who stop their illegal activities of feeding pack of strays in areas close to houses of other people, then Judges don’t want to see them and completely avoid taking cognizance of such material. In one case, where we had shown the video of a Dog attack on a small girl in front of building 11 to the Hon’ble Bombay High Court made fun of it and outrightly rejected it by saying that the dog wanted to play with that girl.
Now we are convinced that there is a big Dog mafia operating in the country, who has a list of High Court and Supreme Court judges having views similar to the dog feeders.
The High Court opined that such material was highly derogatory, objectionable, and would scandalise the Court, amounting to criminal contempt within the meaning of Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. Further, the Court added that such an educated person was not expected to make such comments in regard to the Courts and the Judges of the higher Courts like the Supreme Court and the High Courts. It cannot be believed that when the contemnor undertook such contumacious writing, she was not conscious or could be said to be unaware of the consequences of such writing.
Refusing to accept the apology, which, according to the High Court, did not show any contrition or any genuine remorse, the High Court found her guilty of having committed criminal Contempt of Court and accordingly convicted under Section 12 of the Contempt of Courts Act. The present accused was sentenced to undergo simple imprisonment for one week with a fine of Rs.2,000/-.
[Vineeta Srinandan v. Bombay High Court, Criminal Appeal No(s). 2267/2025, decided on: 30-04-2025]
Advocates who appeared in this case:
For Appellant(s): Mr. Dama Seshadri Naidu, Sr. Adv. Mr. Yash S. Vijay, AOR Mr. Pranjal Agarwal, Adv. Ms. Dixita Gohil, Adv. Ms. Kms Sivani, Adv. Ms. Anisha Mahajan, Adv. Mr. Deepak Sharma, Adv. Mr. Shikhar Aggarwal, Adv.
