Offering insincere apology will amount to contempt of my conscience: Prashant Bhushan on tendering apology
Senior advocate Prashant Bhushan refused to apologise for his tweets wherein he criticised the top court and Chief Justice of India, SA Bobde
FollowNew Delhi: Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court lawyer refused to tender an apology for his two tweets wherein he criticised the top court and Chief Justice of India, SA Bobde.
“Offering insincere apology will amount to contempt of my conscience and of an institution,” Bhushan told the top court.
Bhushan said in a statement submitted before the Supreme Court on August 22, that the tweets represent his bona fide belief and retracting his statements would be an insincere apology.
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Bhushan had posted two tweets, one on the Supreme Court on June 27 and the second one on CJI Bobde on June 29.
On August 20, the apex court had asked Bhushan to reconsider his stance and offer an apology by Monday (August 24) while hearing on the sentence to be awarded to him. On the same day, Bhusahan chose to stick to his tweets.
The Supreme Court on August 14 held advocate Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt in a case registered against him over two of his tweets against the court, and chief justice of India (CJI) Sharad Arvind Bobde.
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The punishment for contempt of court can go up to six months in jail, or fine, or both.
The first tweet, reproduced in the court, said, “When historians in the future look back at the last six years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the SC in this destruction, and more particularly the role of the last four CJIs.”
The second tweet said, “The CJI rides a Rs 50-lakh motorcycle belonging to a BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] leader at Raj Bhavan, Nagpur, without wearing a mask or helmet, at a time when he keeps the SC on lockdown mode denying citizens their fundamental right to access justice!”
