The Delhi High Court on Thursday discharged S. Gurumurthy, the editor of Tamil weekly magazine Thuglak, in a 2018 contempt case initiated against him for his tweet against Justice S. Muralidhar, who was then a judge of the Delhi High Court and currently Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court.
The High Court noted that Mr. Gurumurthy had earlier appeared before the court voluntarily and expressed remorse.
“…after considering the facts and circumstances, we accept S. Gurumurthy’s apology for the subject incident and consider it appropriate to discharge the show-cause notice issued to him in the present contempt petition. He accordingly stands discharged,” a Bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Gaurang Kanth said.
The High Court was hearing a plea by the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) seeking punishment for Mr. Gurumurthy for his tweets criticising the decision of a Bench led by Justice Muralidhar in granting interim protection to Congress leader P. Chidambaram’s son Karti in the INX Media case.
During the hearing, the DHCBA’s counsel submitted that the apology expressed by Mr. Gurumurthy and his statement that he has highest respect for judiciary, and in all humility he was truly sorry for any offence that may have been caused, be accepted as having purged the alleged contempt.
“Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Unnecessarily dragging an honourable judge’s name in all the controversy, it is reported all the time,” the High Court observed.
“You think we rely on newspaper reports and tweets for our dignity? As we have said it in many judgments before, our dignity rests on a surer footing. We are not dependent on criticism, fair or unfair, for our dignity,” Justice Mridul observed orally.
On previous hearings in April this year, senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for Mr. Gurumurthy, stated that his client had already tendered his apology in relation to the subject “tweet”. Mr. Gurumurthy, however, stated that there was no necessity for him to file an additional affidavit expressing an unconditional apology in clear terms.
In October 2019, the High Court had dropped contempt proceedings against Mr. Gurumurthy in another case for having re-tweeted an article against Justice Muralidhar.
