The Supreme Court will decide tomorrow whether comedian Kunal Kamra will face contempt of court proceedings
New Delhi:
The Supreme Court will issue its order tomorrow on a series of petitions seeking the initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against comedian Kunal Kamra for his alleged scandalous tweets against the Supreme Court.
The pleas were brought before a court today headed by Judge Ashok Bhushan, who heard presentations by lawyer Nishant R Katneshwarkar, who appeared for one of the petitioners, and claimed that Kunal Kamra had posted several scandalous tweets for the judiciary.
“All of these tweets are scandalous and we had asked for the consent of the Attorney General,” Katneshwarkar told the court, which also included Justices RS Reddy and MR Shah.
He read the letter from Attorney General KK Venugopal, who had given his consent to the initiation of criminal proceedings for contempt against Kunal Kamra.
The court asked the lawyer not to read the comedian’s alleged derogatory tweets in court, saying they had already read Venugopal’s letter on the matter.
The consent of the Attorney General or the Attorney General is required under article 15 of the Law of Contempt of Courts 1971 to initiate contempt proceedings against a person.
The Attorney General had consented to the initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against Kunal Kamra, saying that the tweets are in bad taste and that it is time for people to understand that blatantly attacking the Supreme Court will attract punishment under the Contempt of Courts Act of 1972.
One of the petitions was filed by law student Shrirang Katneshwarkar and others, who claimed that Kunal Kamra had started posting tweets on November 11, when the high court was hearing journalist Arnab Goswami’s appeal against the High Court order of Bombay rejecting his plea request. provisional bail in a case of “complicity in suicide” in 2018.
The statement alleges that after the Supreme Court granted Arnab Goswami provisional bail on November 11, Kamra re-posted several tweets and thereby scandalized the Supreme Court and further reduced its authority.
The alleged contemnor (Kunal Kamra) has a following of 1.7 million people. The scandalous tweets of the alleged contestant were seen by his followers and many of them retweeted the same thing, the allegation says.
He has alleged that when some people tried to get Kunal Kamra to find out about the contempt of court, he was rude, arrogant and unapologetic, and his conduct shows that he has no respect for the Supreme Court.
The statement alleges that his tweets are in such bad taste that an ordinary and prudent man can deduce that he has scandalized the Supreme Court.
The citizens of India have the highest respect for the courts of law. No law-abiding citizen of this country would tolerate such an act of tweeting by the alleged contemnor (Kunal Kamra), he said.
This Supreme Court, by showing magnanimity and grace, had left contenders alone in the past by offering apologies. But the conduct of the alleged contemnor (Kunal Kamra) is so harsh that the alleged contemnor does not deserve any sympathy from this court, even in the case of presenting an apology. The citizens of this country firmly believe that people like the alleged contemnor should spare no cost, he said.
KK Venugopal had consented to the initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against Kunal Kamra for his tweets and said that today people believe that they can boldly and shamelessly condemn the Supreme Court of India and its judges exercising their freedom of expression, but under the Constitution, freedom of expression is subject to the law of contempt.
I have reviewed each of the tweets you have attached for consent to proceed in criminal contempt against Kunal Kamra. The tweets that I extract below are not only in bad taste but clearly cross the line between humor and contempt of court, the Attorney General had said in his letter to one of the plaintiffs who had requested his consent to the initiation of a contempt proceedings against Kunal Kamra.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
.
