New Delhi: Rejecting plea for a physical court hearing in suo moto contempt case against Advocate Prashant Bhushan for his tweets against CJI SA Bobde and earlier CJIs, the Supreme Court today reserved its order in the matter.
The bench, led by Justice Arun Mishra, heard the matter which is against his tweets on CJI SA Bobde's picture on a luxurious motorcycle, owned by a BJP leader, without mask and helmet. In another tweet, he had criticised the past CJIs for allowing the destruction of democracy.
On Tuesday, Justice Arun Mishra-led bench had heard a case against Bhushan in connection with an interview he had given to Tehelka magazine back in 2009. The order was reserved in that matter and the judges had asked for an apology which Bhushan denied but instead issued a statement where he expressed regrets if his comments had caused any hurt or lowered the prestige of the judiciary.
Also Read: SC reserves order in Advocate Prashant Bhushan's contempt proceedings
Today, Justice Arun Mishra questioned how mask and bike, which the CJI can be seen sitting on, is related to justice or political in nature. You are basically asking us to ignore all this as these were general statements, isn't the tweet an attack on the independence of the judiciary, asked Justice Mishra.
Bhushan's advocate, Dushyant Dave argued that anybody can be anguished over the issues and so was Mr Bhushan. He added that he gets complaints against the registry every day and asked if everything is opening up then why not judiciary.
For the tweets against the past CJIs, Dave pointed out the press conference which was held by the 4 senior judges of the Supreme Court including former CJI Ranjan Gogoi against the functioning of the court. The affidavit of Bhushan had also pointed out various instances where the former judges and even the sitting judges criticised the judiciary and contended that he cannot be silenced.
Justifying his criticism against Ranjan Gogoi, Bhushan highlighted how the woman who alleged sexual harassment charges against Gogoi has been reinstated by the SC proving that there was truth in her allegations. He emphasised that CJI is not the court and therefore the tweets are not against the institution but judges in their personal capacity thereby not obstructing the administration of justice.
SC had appreciated Prashant Bhushan's work in cases pertaining to 2G licenses, coal block allocation, mining in forests etc and would have given him Padma Vibhushan for his work in last 30 years, said Dave.
An advocate had written a letter to SC seeking initiation of suo moto contempt case against Bhushan after which the matter was listed and notices were issued to Bhushan and Twitter. After the notices, Twitter had withheld Bhushan's tweets.
Also read: Expression of opinion cannot constitute contempt of court: Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan to SC
