On Monday, the Supreme Court imposed a fine of Re 1 on activist and lawyer Prashant Bhushan for criminal contempt of court for his tweets against the high court and Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde.
A bench of three judges said that if Bhushan does not deposit the amount before September 15, he will have to go through a simple three-month prison term and be banned from practicing for three years.
On August 14, the court found Bhushan guilty of criminal contempt of court and declared that the allegations made in the tweets against the court and the CJI are malicious in nature and tend to scandalize the court.
Bhushan’s tweets were based on distorted facts and have the effect of destabilizing the base of the judiciary, the court added.
Also read: How Prashant Bhushan’s criminal contempt case progressed in the Supreme Court
Although the court gave him time to “reflect”, Bhushan maintained that he will not apologize and in a statement on August 24 said that the opinions expressed by him through his tweets represented his bona fide beliefs and therefore a apologizing for expressing such beliefs would be disingenuous.
“An apology cannot be a mere incantation and any apology must be made sincerely. If I retract a statement before this court that I otherwise believe to be true or offer an insincere apology, in my eyes that would amount to contempt of my conscience and of an institution (the Supreme Court) that I hold in the highest regard. “, said. said.
However, Attorney General KK Venugopal had urged the court not to punish Bhushan and let him go with a warning, but the court refused to do so unless he offered an apology.
Bhushan tweeted on June 27 that historians will mark the role of the Supreme Court in contributing to what he saw as the destruction of democracy. When historians in the future look back over the past six years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the CS in this destruction, and more particularly the role of the last four CJIs, ”he wrote on Twitter.
In another tweet on June 29, the lawyer had posted a photo of CJI Bobde sitting on a Harley Davidson motorcycle with the text next to the reading: “CJI rides a Rs 50 lakh motorcycle owned by a BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] leader in Raj Bhavan, Nagpur, without wearing a mask or helmet, at a time when he keeps the SC in lockdown mode, denying citizens their fundamental right to access justice! “
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