The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a plea to initiate contempt of court proceedings against jailed JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar, Delhi University lecturer S.A.R Geelani and some others for allegedly terming the execution of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru a “judicial killing.”
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur on Friday agreed to hear the petition filed by lawyer Vineet Dhanda, contending that the term “judicial killing” was in contempt of the apex court verdict pronounced on August 4, 2005, handing down death penalty to Guru for being a part of the conspiracy in the attack on Parliament in 2001.
“The main topic of the ‘cultural event’ organised [in the JNU] was the judicial killing of Afzal Guru, which outright tantamount to criminal contempt as the respondents are calling the judges of the apex court as killers who have been projected to have committed judicial killing of Afzal Guru,” the plea said.
“Afzal and Yakub Memon [1993 Mumbai serial blasts convict] were no martyrs as projected by the group of students of the JNU. The Supreme Court has already passed a detailed judgment in both cases after giving due consideration as per law after going through the evidence,” it said.