Nandini Satpathy Vs PL Dani and Ors 07041978 SCs780139COM430319
Nandini Satpathy Vs PL Dani and Ors 07041978 SCs780139COM430319
Equivalent Citation: AIR1978SC 1025, 1978C riLJ968, (1978)2SC C 424, (1978)SC C (C ri)236, [1978]3SC R608
JUDGMENT
1. Every litigation has a touch of human crises and, as here, it is but a legal
projection of life's vicissitudes.
2 . A complaint was filed by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Vigilance
(Directorate of Vigilance), Cuttack, against the appellant, the former Chief Minister of
Orissa Under Section 179 I.P.C., before the Sub-divisional Judicial Magistrate, Sadar,
Cuttack, alleging offending facts which we will presently explain. Thereupon the
Magistrate took cognizance of the offence and issued summons for appearance
against the accused (Smt. Nandini Satpathy). Aggrieved by the action of the
Magistrate and urging that the complaint did not and could not disclose an offence,
the agitated accused-appellant moved the High Court under Article 226 of the
Constitution as well as Under Section 401 of the Cr. P. Code, challenging the validity
of the Magisterial proceeding. The broad submissions, unsuccessfully made before
the High Court, was that the charge rested upon a failure to answer interrogations by
the police but this charge was unsustainable because the umbrella of Article 20(3) of
the Constitution and the immunity Under Section 161(2) of the Cr. P. Code were wide
enough to shield her in her refusal. The plea of unconstitutionality and illegality, put
forward by this pre-emptive proceeding was rebuffed by the High Court and so she
appealed to this Court by certificate granted under Article 132(1), resulting in the
above two appeals, thereby taking a calculated risk which might boomerang on the
litigant if she failed, because what this Court now decides finally binds.
3. Every appeal to this Court transcends the particular Us to incarnate as an appeal to
the future by the invisible many whose legal lot we decide by laying down the law for
the nation under Article 141; and, so, we are filled, with humility in essaying the task
of unravelling the sense and sensibility, the breadth and depth, of the principle
against self-incrimination enshrined in Article 20(3) of our Constitution and embraced