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I have the honoar to be, Sir, Your most obedient servant, R.A.E. Williams, Collector of Shahabad, 28-3-36.

12. On receipt of this letter, the respondents petitioned the High Court at Patna to commit all the appellants for contempt in disobeying the injunction of that Court. By order of November 19, 1936, the High Court allowed the application, declared the three appellants guilty of contempt, and made the order as to costs hereinbefore set out.

13. The substantial ground on which the High Court came to its conclusion was (a) that by their letter of March 28, 1936, the Government had made up their minds to depart from the correct attitude of the Collector and had decided to come out into the open and support the cause of the Kalyanpur Company; (b) that the Kalyanpur Company were treated by the Government as lessees and the Government would support their supposed lessees in that attitude; and (c) that by some means or other the Kalyanpur Company had persuaded the higher authorities in the Government hierarchy to support their possession.

18. The objection is purely technical, and so far as the Secretary of State is concerned their Lordships think it now sufficiently established that a committal for a finding of contempt for breach of an injunction is not criminal in its nature and is properly dealt with under the Civil Procedure Code. See Scott v. Scott [1919] A.C. 417, 456.

19. The question whether a contempt committed, not by any person inhibited by injunction for breach of that injunction, but by a person said to have aided and abetted a person so inhibited in breaking the injunction, is of such a criminal nature as to prevent an appeal, has given rise to much controversycontroversy which in the present case this Board does not think it necessary to resolve. The respondents themselves when petitioning the Court asked the Court to issue notice upon the opposite parties to show cause why they should not be committed for contempt for disobedience of the injunction.

21. It was further argued that in any case leave to appeal should not have been granted and an appeal should not be admitted in cases where penalties have been imposed for contempt. That very question, has, however, lately been before their Lordships in Ambard v. Attorney-General for Trinidad and Tobago [1936] A.C. 322, 329 : S.C. 38 Bom. L.R. 681 P.C., where Lord Atkin gave it as the clear opinion of the Court that it is competent to His Majesty in Council to give leave to appeal and to entertain appeals against orders of the Courts overseas imposing penalties for contempt of Court. In such cases, however, the discretionary power of the Board will no doubt be exercised with great care. Such interferences when they amount to contempt are quasi-criminal acts and orders punishing them should generally speaking be treated as orders in criminal cases. The learned and noble Lord was then speaking of contempt in criticizing the action of a Court and not of contempt in disobeying an injunction or in aiding and abetting such disobedience, but, whether or no the rules laid down by Lord Atkin apply to this case, their Lordships are of opinion that on the material before them leave was rightly granted.

23. He was, however, prepared to assume for the purpose of the argument that in a proper case proceedings for contempt could be taken against him.

24. Making this assumption, however, he contended that no evidence of disobedience to the injunction or of contempt for the order of the Court had been shown.

25. With this contention their Lordships agree. It is true that the reversion of the surface and mining rights in Upper Murli and of the mining rights in Lower Murli belonged to the Government.