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NEW DELHI: India’s High Court on Monday (Aug 31) imposed a symbolic fine of one rupee (US $ 0.0136) on a prominent lawyer found guilty of criminal contempt for Twitter posts criticizing the higher judges, for which he refused to apologize.
A three-member Supreme Court court said lawyer Prashant Bhushan must pay the fine before September 15, otherwise he could be jailed for three months and barred from the practice for three years.
The case sparked a debate around freedom of expression and the opening of the judiciary to criticism, with thousands of lawyers backing Bhushan and arguing that the court was being too harsh.
“Freedom of speech is there, but the rights of others must also be respected,” the court said in imposing the fine on Bhushan.
READ: Indian lawyer, convicted by Supreme Court for tweets, faces deadline
Bhushan and his lawyers were not immediately available for comment.
In June, Bhushan published a photograph that he said showed Chief Justice SA Bobde astride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, saying he was riding a 5 million rupee ($ 67,000) bicycle without a mask or helmet while the citizens were denied justice according to the court. he was locked up.
Bobde has not publicly commented on the photograph.
In another post on Twitter the same month, Bhushan said that when historians looked at how democracy in India had been destroyed in the past six years, they would note the role of the Supreme Court and the last four higher justices.
Twitter blocked both posts.
In a 108-page warrant convicting him of criminal contempt in early August, the court had said the first post was “patently false.”
The same order said that the second had the “effect of destabilizing the very basis of this important pillar of Indian democracy”, referring to the Judiciary.
The court then asked Bhushan, who has defended public interest litigation, to issue an “unconditional apology”, which he refused to do, leading to the sentencing on Monday.
