The Delhi High Court on Monday accepted Vivek Agnihotri’s apology for tweet against Justice Muralidhar after forcing filmmaker to appear in person. The high court bench comprising Justices Siddharth Mridul and Vikas Mahajan discharged Agnihotri as a contemner from the case.
The court, according to Livelaw, said, “He (Agnihotri) states that he has the utmost respect for the institution of the judiciary and didn’t intend to willfully offend the sensibilities of the court, the notice to show cause issued to him is hereby recalled. He stands discharged as contemptnor.”
The bench cautioned Agnihotri to be ‘careful in going forward.’ It listed the matter for the next hearing on 24 May.
Background of the case
In October 2018, Justices S Muralidhar and Vinod Goel had set aside the trial court’s transit order on Gautav Navlakha and called his detention untenable leading to the journalist’s release from his house arrest in the Bhima Koregaon case. The bench headed by Justice Muralidhar had also quashed a transit order by a local court, allowing the Maharashtra Police to take Navlakha from Delhi in custody.
Soon after the Delhi High Court passed the judgment, Agnihotri had tweeted alleging biases by Justice Muralidhar. Ranganathan, who works for fake news portal, Swarajya Magazine, as a consulting editor, too had tweeted against the high court order.
The Delhi High Court took a dim view of these tweets and initiated a suo motu case of contempt against Ranganathan, Agnihotri and Swarajya portal among others. In September last year, the high court decided to proceed against the accused after without hearing them after nobody appeared on behalf of some of the respondents despite getting a notice.
Agnihotri then issued an unconditional apology and submitted in writing by requesting the court to allow him to take part in subsequent hearings. He also claimed in his affidavit that he had deleted his questionable tweets. However, micus curiae Arvind Nigam later informed the court that Agnihotri’s claim in the affidavit may not have been true since, as per Twitter’s affidavit, it may have been the microblogging site that deleted Agnihotri’s tweets, not the controversial filmmaker himself.
The court directed Agnihotri to remain in court to show his remorse in person, but he did not appear saying that he had a high temperature. This irked the bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Talwant Singh as they made it clear that Agnihotri was not being asked to appear but the court had directed him for his appearance.
Nigam informed the court that Ranganathan, another alleged contemner, had tweeted saying that he will never apologise and will go down fighting.