The Supreme Court has issued notices to advocate Prashant Bhushan and Twitter India taking suo moto contempt of two tweets posted by Bhushan last month. The apex court has sought a detailed response from lawyer Prashant Bhushan on his alleged tweets while Twitter India has been asked to file its response in the case. The top court also issued a notice to Attorney General KK Venugopal for assistance and posted the matter for hearing on August 5.
A three-judge bench, headed by Justice Arun Mishra, stated that the matter relates to two tweets posted by Bhushan last month – one directed against the CJI with his photo showing him riding a bike. The tweet was posted on June 29. Another tweet by Bhushan was posted on June 27 wherein he spoke about the role of four former CJIs in “destroying democracy without a formal emergency”.
“When historians in the 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,” Bhushan had tweeted.
For Twitter, senior advocate Sajjan Poovayya appeared and informed the Court that Twitter can only disable a tweet on orders passed by the Court. He proposed the Court to pass an order to this effect but the Court refused. Nobody appeared for Bhushan.
According to the rule of contempt, for a publication (including web/social media platform too), the author and the publisher, both are called out in the matter.
