Cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, 40, has filed a criminal contempt of court plea against Indian Police Service (IPS) officer G. Sampath Kumar before the Madras High Court for having allegedly made contumacious remarks against the Supreme Court and the High Court while filing a written statement in a ₹100 crore defamation suit filed against the officer by the cricketer for having named him in the Indian Premier League (IPL) betting scam.
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The contempt petition was listed for hearing before Justices P.N. Prakash and R.M.T. Teekaa Raman on Friday and senior counsel P.R. Raman was present in the court to argue the matter. However, the judges could not take up the case due to paucity of time. The petition had been listed after Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram had granted consent on July 7 and also rejected a plea by the IPS officer to reconsider the grant of consent.
In his affidavit, Mr. Dhoni said he had filed a suit for damages in 2014 against a television channel and the IPS officer and obtained an interim injunction. However, only in the end of 2021, the IPS officer had chosen to file his written statement in the suit. “Upon perusing the statement, I found that there are scandalous and contumacious statements,” the cricketer said and urged the court to punish the officer for criminal contempt.
He claimed Mr. Kumar had accused the Supreme Court of having “deviated its focus from rule of law” while dealing with a report submitted before it in a sealed cover with respect to the betting issue. Similarly, the IPS officer had also claimed that the cricketer had chosen to file the case in the Madras High Court with the sole aim of obtaining a gag order and said that the choice of the senior counsel “speak volumes about the conspiracy behind the plaint.”
After going through the written statement, the A-G was fully convinced that the pleadings had the effect of scandalising the court proceedings by making unwarranted imputations. “The further statement that it is a conspiracy to damage control by the cartel by gagging the voices are malicious. The above statement is an insinuation that the High Court is also in the cartel,” the A-G had written while granting consent to pursue the criminal contempt.