New Delhi: The Supreme court today rejected Senior Counsel Dushyant Dave’s plea for a physical court hearing in Prashant Bhushan’s suo motu criminal contempt case.
Dave, appearing for advocate Bhushan, submitted that the manner in which the petition was placed before the bench on the administrative side was wrong since the petition itself was faulty lacking in consent of the Attorney General.
The bench, comprising Justices Arun Mishra, BR Gavai and Krishna Murari, declining Dave’s prayer, said that even constitution bench matters were being heard virtually so the contempt petition could also be heard virtually.
The bench also declined to transfer the matter to another bench at the request of Dave.
The bench was hearing suo motu contempt proceedings initiated against Bhushan for his tweets against the Chief Justice SA Bobde and four other former Chief Justices of the Supreme Court.
On the previous occasion the bench, took note of a tweet which was made by Bhushan from his personal twitter handle on June 27 which reads: “When historians in future look back at the last 6 years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the Supreme Court in this destruction, & more particularly the role of the last 4 CJIs.”
The court also received an application filed by Mahek Maheshwari, who has alleged that Prashant Bhushan had passed a remark tagging picture of the Chief Justice on Twitter on June 29 at 11.37 am saying: “CJI rides a 50lakh motorcycle belonging to a BJP leader at Raj Bhavan Nagpur, without a mask or helmet, at a time when he keeps the SC in lockdown mode denying citizens their fundamental right to access Justice!”
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In the previous hearing Justice BR Gavai had also pulled up Bhushan, saying “if you don’t have faith in this institution, why should we hear you at all?
– India Legal Bureau