Hours after Supreme Court website showed that a suo moto case of contempt of court was initiated against India Today employee Rajdeep Sardesai, the apex court official has clarified that the website was updated inadvertently and that no case is initiated against Sardesai.
On February 16, a case was listed against Rajdeep Sardesai on Supreme Court’s website. It said that the court had registered the case as a suo moto criminal contempt petition. However, the Supreme Court later clarified that it did not initiate any court proceedings against Sardesai. The listing of the case was allegedly an inadvertent mistake. As per the reports, the court said that mistake would be soon rectified.
The Supreme Court official clarified that no contempt proceeding has been initiated against Rajdeep Sardesai and the error in this regard would be rectified soon.#SupremeCourt @sardesairajdeep #RajdeepSardesai#ContemptofCourt
— Bar & Bench (@barandbench) February 16, 2021
In a statement, the Supreme Court said, “This is in context with news item being flashed in some news channels about initiating suo moto criminal contempt proceeding against Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai by Supreme court, it is made clear that no such proceeding has been initiated against Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai. However status shown at Supreme Court website vide case no. SMC (Crl) 02/2021 has been placed inadvertently. Appropriate action to rectify the same is under process.”
The listing showed case against Sardesai for his comment on the judiciary
Last year, a petition was filed in the apex court seeking contempt proceedings against the India Today employee Rajdeep Sardesai for his tweets on the case against Prashant Bhushan. One Aashtha Khurana had filed the said petition. In her petition, Khurana said that Sardesai’s comments against apex court were disrespectful.
Sardesai had posted several tweets criticizing the court. In one tweet he criticized ruling against Bhushan and said the court had time to hear contempt case while habeas corpus petitions of those detained in Kashmir was pending for more than a year. In another tweet, he called the case against Bhushan an embarrassment of its own making by the Supreme Court. In one more tweet, he had asked the courts how to do their job.
