"Sheer wastage of time", Delhi HC closes contempt case against author Anand Ranganathan & ors [Read Order]

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has closed criminal contempt proceedings initiated by it against author Anand Ranganathan over remarks allegedly targetting Justice (Retd.) S Muralidhar in 2018, stating that continuing the same would be a "sheer wastage of time".

The Court closed the proceedings noting that "initiators of contemptuous allegations about a sitting judge of this Court have already tendered their unconditional apology before this Court and other respondents have also stated that they have utmost respect for the Court and their articles were mere expression in synchronization with
their right to freedom of speech but without intent to cause any disrespect to this Court."

A division bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Manoj Jain thus proceeded to close the proceedings.

In 2018, a certain video and some articles were published alleging bias against former judge of Delhi High Court and Chief Justice of the Odisha High Court Justice S Muralidhar after he ordered the release of one Gautam Navlakha from house arrest in the Bhima-Koregaon violence case.

Subsequently, contempt of court proceedings were initiated by the High Court on its own after receiving a letter from Sr. Adv. Rajshekhar Rao.

Proceedings were initiated against several alleged contemnors i.e. Swaminathan Gurumurthy, the publisher of an offending article, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri and others. Ranganathan was one of them.

While most of the others either tendered apologies, or were dropped from the proceedings for being mere intermediaries, Ranganathan, as a free speech absolutist, refused to apologize.

He submitted that he had not himself published/republished any offending content, giving rise to the cause of action against him. He further stated therein that he had only exercised his fundamental right of free speech and expression of his thoughts under Article 19 of the Constitution of India without taking any personal stand about the offending material in question.

Adv. J Sai Deepak appearing Ranganathan had argued that the proceedings against him were a "textbook case of abuse of contempt" as being an advocate of free speech, he had only tweeted in support of the right of a citizen to "make a comment".

Earlier, the contempt proceedings initiated against Swaminathan Gurumurthy, the editor of the Chennai-based weekly "Thuglak" were closed after he agreed to re-tweet the apology of the author of the offending article.

The author of the offending article, Desh Kapoor, had in August 2019 tendered apology to the court and deleted the objectionable content.

Cause Title: Court in its own motion v S Gurumurthy

[Read Order]