The Supreme Court on Tuesday registered a suo motu criminal contempt case against the controversial journalist Rajdeep Sardesai for making a series of statements against the judiciary on Twitter in August last year.
[BREAKING] Supreme Court registers suo motu Criminal Contempt case against Rajdeep Sardesai for tweets criticising court, months after AG KK Venugopal denied consent
— Bar & Bench (@barandbench) February 16, 2021
report by @DebayonRoy#SupremeCourt #ContemptofCourt @sardesairajdeep
https://t.co/qWc7vzDF5O
Supreme court’s decision came months after Attorney General KK Venugopal had declined to give his consent for initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against the former India Today employee.
Terming the Tweets by Rajdeep Sardesai as not of “so serious a nature as to undermine the majesty of the Supreme Court or lower its stature in the minds of the public”, Attorney General KK Venugopal, in his letter to Supreme Court advocate Om Prakash Parihar dated September 17, 2020, denied his consent to initiate contempt proceedings against controversial ‘journalist’ Rajdeep Sardesai for his tweets on the suo-motu contempt case against Prashant Bhushan and judiciary.
A petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking contempt proceedings against India Today employee Rajdeep Sardesai for his tweets on the suo-motu contempt case against Prashant Bhushan and judiciary by one Aastha Khurana.
Khurana in her petition had claimed that Rajdeep Sardesai had criticised the Supreme Court after the apex court had convicted controversial far-left activist Prashant Bhushan for making disrespectful remarks against the Supreme Court.
In one tweet, Rajdeep Sardesai had criticised the Supreme Court over its ruling on Prashant Bhushan case while claiming that the apex 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 had also said that the contempt of court case against Bhushan was an embarrassment of its own making by the Supreme Court. In one more tweet, he had asked the courts how to do their job.
Update: Hours after it was reported that suo moto action has been initiated against Sardesai, Supreme Court issued clarification that the website was updated inadvertently and that no such action has been initiated.
