Synopsis: Monday, the Supreme Court fined lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan Re 1 in contempt of court case against him, finding that he has taken his actions into consideration.
On Monday, the Supreme Court sentenced lawyer and activist Prashant Bhushan to a Re 1 fine in contempt of court case and said that if he fails to pay this fine by September 15, he would be jailed for three months and barred from practice for three years.
Justice Arun Mishra said while reading the sentencing order that SC precedents say that the in-house procedure should be adopted for complaints of corruption against judges.
After the decision, Bhushan said on Twitter that he and his lawyer Rajeev Dhavan had contributed 1 Re immediately.
Later that day, Bhushan provided a thorough statement on the decision, saying that, while reserving his right to request a review of the judgment, he would “respectfully pay the fine just as” he would have agreed to any other legal punishment.
The bench of Justices Mishra, B.R. Gavai and Krishna Murari had reserved its judgment on August 25, after asking Bhushan multiple times to apologise for his tweets. Bhushan said that he could not, in good faith, apologise, since he believed he had done nothing wrong and his criticism was constitutional and valid. The bench was not satisfied with this response, with Justice Mishra asking what is wrong in using the word ‘apology’ or what is wrong in seeking apology. Apology is a magical word, which can heal many things.
Attorney General K.K. Venugopal had asked the bench not to punish Bhushan and instead be “compassionate” in their treatment of him.
The bench had held Bhushan guilty of contempt of court on August 14. The court had taken suo moto cognisance of two of Bhushan’s tweets after a complaint by one Mahek Maheshwari. The tweets in question were critical of the top court and posted by Bhushan on Twitter on June 27 and June 29. The June 27 tweet said, that when historians in future look back at the last 6 years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the Supreme Court in this destruction, & more particularly the role of the last 4 CJIs.
The June 29 tweet included a photo of CJI S.A. Bobde riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and said, “CJI rides a 50 lakh motorcycle belonging to a BJP leader at Raj Bhavan, Nagpur, without a mask or helmet, at a time when he keeps the SC in Lockdown mode denying citizens their fundamental right to access Justice!”
The bench argued that these tweets were “serious contempt of the court”.