Advocates Vineet Jindal and Shashank Shekhar Jha have written separate letters to Attorney General of India KK Venugopal asking him to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against Senior Advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal. The two advocates sent this request following the veteran advocate‘s controversial statements about the Indian judiciary and Supreme Court of India.
In a letter to the AG, advocate Vineet Jindal said “Mr. Kapil Sibal has directly made allegations with intent to disgrace and scandalise the sitting judges of the highest court, the Supreme Court, of our country. The statements by Mr. Sibal have scandalized the judgments passed by the Supreme Court judges and accused the judges of being corrupt.”
Advocate Jindal further said, “Mr. Sibal’s statement was aired widely speculated on internet and News Publication in which Mr.Sibal has passed derogatory and scandalous statements in context of Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.”
Vineet Jindal has sought the Attorney General’s consent under section 15 (1)(b) of the Contempt of Courts Act 1971, read with rule 3 of the rules to regulate the proceedings for the Contempt of the Supreme court 1975 to initiate criminal contempt against Kapil Sibal.
In a separate letter, Advocate Shashank Shekhar Jha also sought consent from the AG to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against Kapil Sibal.
In his letter, Jha said, “That this is becoming a common trend and setting the wrong precedence that lawyers with political affiliations use judiciary as a means to push their political agenda thereby criticising the Court and the whole legal system by making reckless allegations against judges who do not decide cases in their favor.”
The controversial remarks made by Kapil Sibal against the judiciary
While speaking at an event called “People’s Tribunal”, organized to discuss the “Judicial Rollback of Civil Liberties”, Kapil Sibal had made several controversial remarks about the judiciary and the processes being followed by the Supreme Court of India.
During his speech, Kapil Sibal said, “I do not want to talk like this about a Court where I have practiced for 50 years but the time has come. If we don’t speak it, who will? The reality is such that any sensitive matter which we know has a problem is placed before certain judges and we know the outcome.”
Sibal also went on to question the independence of the judiciary and raised questions over the procedure through which different benches are constituted for different cases.
Sibal even went on to remark that if you think you will get relief from Supreme Court, you are highly mistaken.
