Prashant
NEW DELHI, August 31: The senior advocate and activist Prashant Bhushan, who was found guilty of criminal contempt of court for two of his tweets against the Supreme Court chief justices and judiciary, was on Monday let off by the apex court with a token fine of Re 1.
The bench, comprising Justices Arun Mishra, B R Gavai and Krishna Murari gave him time till September 15 to deposit the amount failing which he would attract three months jail term and would be debarred from practice for three years.
Bhushan, however, soon afterwards tweeted that his lawyer friend and his advocate in the case Rajiv Dhavan contributed Re 1 immediately after the contempt judgement today which I gratefully accepted.”
“The freedom of speech cannot be curtailed but rights of others need to be respected,” the court observed.
On August 14, the bench had held Bhushan guilty over the tweets made on June 27 and June 29.
During the arguments, Bhushan told the court that the “two tweets represented” his “bonafide beliefs” and that he did not want to apologise for the same. He also answered in the negative when asked if he wished to reconsider his statement. The court, however, gave him time till August 24 “to submit unconditional apology, if he so desires”. But he refused to apologise and instead stuck to his guns and in a supplementary statement on August 24, said the tweets represent his beliefs and apologising for them “would be insincere.”
Attorney-General K K Venugopal urged the court not to punish Bhushan, saying he had done a lot of good work in the area of public interest litigations.
The bench had met again on August 25 to consider the “effect of the supplementary statement” but reserved its judgement that day after expressing its anguish at his criticism of “sitting and retired” judges.
The court said while criticism was welcome, one should not “attribute motives to judges” since they cannot go to the press to defend themselves and “can only speak through judgements.”
(Manas Dasgupta)
