High Court judge’s remarks on trial court counterpart ‘chilling, uncalled for’, Madhya Pradesh HC Bench says

On Monday, the High Court noted that Justice Gupta “passed damning and disparaging remarks against the Ld. Trial Court much against the consistent law laid down by the Supreme Court”.

Written by Anand Mohan J

Bhopal | Updated: September 24, 2025 07:00 AM IST

3 min read

‘Chilling, uncalled for’: Madhya Pradesh HC Bench on previous observations by HC against trial court judge

“The High Courts must desist from passing observation which have the propensity to besmirch the fair name of the Trial Court Judge, even before he is given an opportunity to defend his order,” the Bench said Monday.

A two-judge Bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court has observed that remarks made by another judge of the High Court against a trial court judge were “chilling” and “absolutely uncalled for”.

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A Bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Pradeep Mittal had taken suo motu cognisance of directions passed by Justice Rajesh Kumar Gupta of the Gwalior Bench on September 12, in which he observed that Additional Sessions Judge Vivek Sharma appeared to have “ulterior motives” in dropping charges against an accused.

Justice Gupta had said, “…It appears that 1st Additional Sessions Judge has ulterior motive in holding charge under Section 406 of IPC only against the applicant to give undue advantage to him by which applicant can avail the benefit of bail.” The observations came after Justice Gupta heard a bail plea by one Roop Singh Parihar, a computer operator at the office of the Land Acquisition Officer. The bail plea came in a case registered last year, alleging irregularities in the transfer of over Rs 25 lakh to eight persons, including Parihar and his wife, in a land acquisition matter. Parihar was accused of forging the Collector’s order.

On Monday, the High Court noted that Justice Gupta “passed damning and disparaging remarks against the Ld. Trial Court much against the consistent law laid down by the Supreme Court”.

The Bench called the directions “chilling”. “The aforesaid direction is chilling. Firstly, it concludes that the order of discharge passed by the Ld. 1st ADSJ was to ‘give undue advantage’ to the accused and secondly, it speculates ulterior motive on the part of the Ld. 1st ADSJ by observing ‘..it appears that 1st Additional Sessions Judge has ulterior motives’,” the Bench observed.

“This, unfortunately, was absolutely uncalled for and a violation of the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s consistent direction to the High Court to desist from such observations in judicial orders,” the High Court observed.

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The Bench said that “when the High Court exceeds its discretion and jurisdiction in a given case, the same has to be deemed an error on the part of the High Court rather than presuming the same to be an order in the exercise of its extraordinary or inherent jurisdiction”.

Observing that since “judicial discipline dictates the said orders under consideration are untouchable by this Court, and it is only the discretion of the Hon’ble Supreme Court,” the High Court directed the respondents in the case to file a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court within a period of 10 days.

“As this order is not passed in an adversarial capacity, and there is no adversity suffered by the High Court on account of this order, it obviates the necessity to issue notice and call for a reply from the High Court,” the Bench said.

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