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Hours after the apex court's website showed that a suo moto case of contempt of court had been issued against senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai, the Supreme Court officials clarified that no such case had been filed against him and the website had been updated 'inadvertently'.
The court's website showed that on February 13th case number SMC (Crl) 02/2021 had been filed against Rajdeep Sardesai. The court in its statement said that appropriate actions to rectify the mistake were underway. The case was still listed on the website on February 17 at 9:51 AM (attached below).
In the afternoon of February 16th, several media houses reported that the Supreme Court had registered a case against Sardesai for contempt of court on a complaint filed by Aastha Khurana in relation to tweets by the journalist where he had allegedly disrespected the judiciary. This is the same complaint on which K.K. Venugopal, the Attorney General of India had refused sanction to initiate a case of criminal contempt against Rajdeep Sardesai, following which the petitioner filed a new complaint directly in the apex court. The Attorney General had opined that the statements were not serious enough to undermine the majesty of the apex court or lower its stature in the mind of people.
The tweets by the senior journalist were made in the context of the Prashant Bhushan Case, where he was imposed with a fine of Rs.1. A few deleted tweets of Sardesai were also brought up in the petition in which he had commented (Retd.) Justice Arun Mishra and former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi. According to the petitioner, the journalist is a well-known personality and considered a credible source of information by various people. Therefore, his statements on the court and the judicial system appeared to be a threat to society and may lead people to see the court with questionable eyes and not trust the judiciary.
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