Supreme Court holds Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt for tweets against CJI
New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Friday held Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt in a case registered against him over two of his tweets. The arguments on quantum of punishment will be heard on August 20.
The senior lawyer can be punished with a jail term of upto six months or a fine of Rs 2000 or with both in the matter.
On June 29, Bhushan had tweeted on a photo of Chief Justice of India SA Bobde astride a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
On August 5, the top court had reserved its verdict in the matter after Bhushan had defended his posts on the micro-blogging site. The lawyer said the posts were against the judges regarding their conduct in their personal capacity and they did not obstruct administration of justice.
A show cause notice was issued to Bhushan on July 22 by top court which said, "the tweets had brought the administration of justice in disrepute."
Representatives from Twitter were also present and they had nothing to defend. The company agreed to act if the court directs it to disable the tweet identified by the Registry. Twitter cannot disable a tweet without the court’s order.
Currently, Bhushan is appearing in the Supreme Court for the Centre for Public Interest Litigation, seeking transfer of PM Cares funds to the National Disaster Response Fund. He also represents the Association for Democratic Reforms in a petition challenging the Electoral Bond Scheme.
