The Supreme Court of India
New Delhi : A three-judge Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra sentenced senior advocate Prashant Bhushan to a fine of rupee one in the criminal contempt case as the punishment on Monday. The court ordered that if he failed to pay the penalty amount in the registry of the apex court by September 15, then he would face simple imprisonment for three months and debar him from practice for three years.
The apex court had on August 14 convicted Prashant Bhushan of criminal contempt for two derogatory tweets against the judiciary, saying that it cannot be called a healthy criticism of the functioning of the judiciary in the public interest.
While pronouncing the sentence, the bench said, “Directly or indirectly, the contemnor was persuaded to end this matter by tendering an apology and save the grace of the institution as well as the individual, who is an officer of the Court. However, for the reasons best known to him he has neither shown regret in spite of our persuasion or the advice of the learned Attorney General. Thus, we have to consider imposing an appropriate sentence upon him.”
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Soon after the judgment, Bhushan tweeted with his photographs holding one rupee coin, saying “My lawyer & senior colleague Rajiv Dhavan contributed 1 Re immediately after the contempt judgement today which I gratefully accepted”.
Bhushan, a public interest lawyer, had been convicted for criticizing the Supreme Court and its chief justice in his two recent tweets. His case was largely interpreted, as New York Times wrote and Bhushan tweeted it, “as a test of free expression in the world’s largest democracy”.
In this case, a three-judge bench led by Justice Arun Mishra, and comprising Justices Bhushan Ramkrishan Gavai and Krishna Murari, said Bhushan’s tweets were based on distorted facts and amounted to “criminal contempt”.
The bench said that freedom of expression could not be impeded but the rights of others also had to be respected. “His conduct reflects adamance & ego, which has no place to exist in the system of administration of justice and in noble profession, and no remorse is shown for the harm done to the institution to which he belongs”, the bench said and further added: “”We are not afraid of sentencing the contemnor either with imprisonment or from debarring him from the practice…At the same time, we cannot retaliate merely because the contemnor has made a statement that he is neither invoking the magnanimity or the mercy of this Court and he is ready to submit to the penalty.”
Bhushan had tweeted about the chief Justice of India for appearing in public without a mask at a time when physical hearings had been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic and also blamed the court for destroying democracy in the last few years. He had refused to apologize to the court for these tweets, saying that what he believed in was what he said.
– globalbihari bureau (with inputs from Lata Baisoya)
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