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A lawyer of the Punjab and Haryana High Court has been sentenced to one-month imprisonment on grounds of contempt of court as he had criticized a judge on his Facebook account.
Adv. Manish Vashishth had posted on Facebook that Justice Inderjit Singh had decided three of his matters in ‘an illegal manner’. He stated that the Justice had not uploaded the order even after its pronouncement, alleging that the reason behind this was that the judge himself was not aware to the contents of the judgement. The post was taken down after the Court initiated contempt proceedings against Mr. Vashishth. Justice M.M.S. Bedi and Justice Hari Pal rejected the defence provided by him, stating that merely taking down the post and contending the authority of the High Court to hear the matter were not satisfactory grounds for dismissal. Further, the lawyer, instead of focussing on facts, argued on the origin of the post. This view was found untenable by the Bench, who also noted that the lawyer had filed various complaints against other judicial officers in the past, to ‘browbeat them’. The HC observed that his past conduct showed that he was in the habit of maligning judicial officers, as was demonstrated by the fact that his past behaviour had also led to a District and Sessions Judge’s recusal from a matter.
Thus, the Court held him guilty of contempt. While deciding the sentence itself, they rejected Mr. Vashishth’s plea of lenience on grounds of him being a lawyer. They took in account that he had not shown any remorse or furnished any apology to that effect, and therefore ordered a month-long imprisonment. However, the Court stated that as he had a right to file an appeal, the sentence would not be executed until July 2.
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