Bhushan to SC: It would be insincere to offer apology
■ ‘Did not tweet in fit of absent mindedness’
Senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan told the Supreme Court on Thursday that he did not tweet in absence mindedness and it would be insincere and contemptuous on his part to offer an apology for the tweets that expressed what was and continues to be his bona fide belief. The top court on August 14 had held Mr Bhushan guilty of criminal contempt for his derogatory tweets against the judiciary, saying they cannot be said to be a fair criticism of the functioning of the judiciary made in the public interest.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, B.R. Gavai and Krishna Murari was told by Mr Bhushan, who himself addressed the court along with senior lawyers Rajeev Dhavan and Dushyant Dave representing him, that his tweets were nothing but a small attempt to discharge what he considered to be his highest duty at this juncture in the history of our republic.
“I did not tweet in a fit of absence mindedness. It would be insincere and contemptuous on my part to offer an apology for the tweets that expressed what was and continues to be my bona fide belief. Therefore, I can only humbly paraphrase what the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had said in his trial: I do not ask for mercy. I do not appeal to magnanimity,” Mr Bhushan said in his statement to the court. Mr Bhushan told the bench that he has gone through the August 14 judgment of the court and was pained that he has been held guilty of committing contempt of the court whose majesty he has tried to uphold — not as a courtier or cheerleader but as a humble guard — for over three decades, at some personal and professional cost. I am pained, not because I may be punished, but because I have been grossly misunderstood, he said.
“I am shocked that the court holds me guilty of “malicious, scurrilous, calculated attack” on the institution of administration of justice. I am dismayed that the Court has arrived at this conclusion without providing any evidence of my motives to launch such an attack. I must confess that I am disappointed that the court did not find it necessary to serve me with a copy of the complaint on the basis of which the suo motu notice was issued, nor found it necessary to respond to the specific averments made by me in my reply affidavit or the many submissions of my counsel,” the activistlawyer said.
I find it hard to believe that the Court finds my tweet “has the effect of destabilising the very foundation of this important pillar of Indian democracy”. I can only reiterate that these two tweets represented my bonafide beliefs, the expression of which must be permissible in any democracy, he said.