1. ACTIVISTS ‘DARE’ SC TO SLAP CONTEMPT CHARGES
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: In a dramatic throwback to civil disobedience, over 30 prominent
persons have decided to “court contempt” daring the judiciary to punish them
along with Mid Day journalists for making allegations against former Chief Justice
Y K Sabharwal.
Since the HC held that the publication of those allegations amounted to contempt
and sentenced the journalists to four months of imprisonment, the group led by
RTI campaigner Arvind Kejriwal announced on Tuesday that they would file an
application before the Supreme Court reiterating the allegations and saying, “We
plead guilty to the same charge of contempt and request this Hon’ble Court to
sentence us to the same punishment.”
The application is due to be filed on Thursday, on the eve of the hearing of the
appeal by the journalists against the HC verdict. The draft application said that
unless it was reversed, the judgment was bound to send out a message that “if
any judge indulged in any wrongdoing, the people of India do not have a right to
speak about it or demand an inquiry into it.”
Besides Kejriwal, those who are participating in this novel form of protest include
Magsaysay awardees Aruna Roy, Sandeep Pandey and Rajendra Singh, former
NAC member Jean Dreze, former bureaucrats Harsh Mander and S P Shukla,
senior journalist Prabhash Joshi and an array of academics, doctors and social
activists.
2. The meeting addressed by, among others, author-activist Arundhati Roy,
advocate Prashant Bhushan and AIIMS professor Anoop Saraya, denounced the
HC’s decision to convict the journalists (without going into the veracity of their
allegations against ex-CJI) as ‘‘an assault on our freedom of speech and
expression.’’
While acknowledging the service rendered by the judiciary in various spheres,
including to protect the freedom of speech, the proposed application said that the
HC verdict this month in the Mid Day case however ‘‘strikes at the found of our
respect’’ for the courts.
Prashant Bhushan said that if the SC, instead of reversing the HC verdict,
decides to throw the applicants behind bars along with Mid Day staffers, there
will be many more who will commit the same offence of reiterating the allegations
against Justice Sabharwal. and dare the apex court to sentence them as well.