The High Court of Delhi on Thursday discharged S. Gurumurthy, Editor of Tamil political weekly ‘Thuglak’ and RSS Ideologue, after accepting his apology in a criminal contempt case filed against him for allegedly defaming Justice S. Muralidhar on social media.
The Division Bench headed by Justice Siddharth Mridul said that it has accepted apology and ‘deep remorse’ for the incident expressed by Gurumurthy and discharged the show cause notice issued to him in the contempt petition.
The Division Bench passed the orders on a petition filed by the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) against Gurumurthy in 2018, seeking criminal contempt proceedings against Gurumurthy over his tweet, wherein he questioned whether Justice S. Muralidhar had worked as Senior Advocate P. Chidambaram’s junior.
The tweet was posted following the decision of a Division Bench led by Justice Muralidhar to award temporary protection to Karti Chidambaram, Congress leader and son of P Chidambaram, in the INX Media case.
The Counsel representing the DHCBA submitted that the apology expressed by Gurumurthy, along with his statement that he has highest respect for the judiciary and was truly sorry for any offence that may have been caused, be accepted as having purged the alleged contempt.
The High Court observed that Gurumurthy had appeared before the court on an earlier occasion in person on his own volition and had expressed remorse for the tweets.
However, the Division Bench clarified that it had not expressed any opinion on the issues of law articulated on behalf of the parties.
Justice Mridul, during the course of hearing, made an oral observation that sometimes, the cure became worse than the disease. He said unnecessary dragging of the name of an honourable judge in all this controversy, which was reported all the time, whatever for (did not serve any purpose).
He asked the Counsel appearing for DHCBA whether he thought that the Judges were relying on newspaper reports and tweets for their dignity.
The Division Bench asserted that as it has said in many judgments before, the dignity of judges rested on a surer footing. They were not dependent on criticism, fair or unfair, for their dignity, it added.
Gurumurthy had allegedly posted on Twitter a question asking whether Justice Muralidhar was a junior of Senior Advocate P. Chidambaram. The tweet was made after a Division Bench led by Justice Muralidhar had granted interim protection to Karti Chidambaram in the INX media case.
Justice Muralidhar had categorically clarified that he had no relationship of any kind with P. Chidambaram and that he had never worked as junior to the former Finance Minister.
(Case title: Delhi High Court Bar Association through its Secretary vs S Gurumurthy)