India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, AUGUST 31—The supreme Court has sentenced senior advocate Prashant Bhushan to pay a fine of Re 1 in a case of contempt of judiciary against him.
He has been ordered to deposit the money with the Registry of the supreme Court on or before September 15 failing which he will have to undergo a jail term of three months and will also be debarred from practice for three months.
The order was given by a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra in connection with two tweets Bhushan had shared from his personal twitter handle.
In his judgement, Justice Mishra stated that the contemnor was given opportunity to say regret. However, the contemnor refused to do so and instead, gave wide publicity to his statements he submitted in the court which brought further disrepute to the Supreme Court.
After the verdict, Bhushan said he would “respectfully” pay the fine. “While I reserve the right to review the judgment, I will respectfully pay the fine,” he said.
“My tweets were not intended to disrespect SC but were meant to express my anguish at what I felt was deviation from its sterling record… This is a watershed moment for freedom of speech and seems to have encouraged many people to speak out against injustices,” he told mediapersons.
