Breaking | Delhi High Court Discharges S Gurumurthy In Criminal Contempt Case For Tweet Against Justice S Muralidhar

The Delhi High Court on Thursday discharged editor of Tamil political weekly “Thuglak” and RSS Ideologue S Gurumurthy in a criminal contempt case filed against him for his tweet against Justice S Muralidhar in 2018, after accepting his apology and “expression of deep remorse”.

“We accept Mr. S Gurumurthy’s apology and expression of deep remorse for the subject incident and consider it appropriate to discharge the show cause issued to him in the present contempt petition. He accordingly stands discharged,” a division bench headed by Justice Siddharth Mridul said.

The court was hearing a criminal contempt petition filed by Delhi High Court Bar Association against S Gurumurthy in 2018.

During the hearing today, senior counsel appearing for the lawyers’ body submitted that the apology expressed by Gurumurthy, along with his statement that he has highest respect for the judiciary and is truly sorry for any offence that may have been caused, be accepted as having purged the alleged contempt.

The bench then observed that Gurumurthy had appeared before the court on an earlier occasion in person on his own volition and expressed remorse for the tweets.

While discharging Gurumurthy, the court clarified that it had not expressed any opinion on the issues of law articulated on behalf of the parties.

During the initial course of hearing, Justice Mridul orally told the lawyers’ body’s counsel:

“Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Unnecessarily dragging an honourable judge’s name in all this controversy, reported all the time, whatever for…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.”

The matter pertains to a tweet made by Gurumurthy where he had posted a question asking whether Justice Muralidhar was a junior of Senior Advocate P Chidambaram. The tweet was made after an interim protection was granted to Karti Chidambaram by a division bench headed by Justice Muralidhar in the INX media case.

Justice Muralidhar had categorically clarified that he had no relationship of any kind with P Chidambaram and that he had never worked as his junior.

Case Title: DELHI HIGH COURT BAR ASSOCIATION THROUGH ITS SECRETARY v. S. GURUMURTHY

Citation: 2023 LiveLaw (Del) 589