Supreme Court to rule on contempt of court petitions against Kunal Kamra on Friday

The Supreme Court on Thursday, 17 December, said it will pronounce its order on Friday on a batch of petitions seeking initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against stand-up comic artist Kunal Kamra for his alleged scandalous tweets against the apex court. The pleas came up for hearing before a bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan which heard the submissions of advocate Nishant R Katneshwarkar, who appeared for one of the petitioners and claimed that Kamra had posted several tweets scandalous to the judiciary. “All these tweets are scandalous and we had sought consent from the attorney general,” Katneshwarkar told the bench, which also comprised justices RS Reddy and MR Shah. He read out the letter of Attorney General KK Venugopal, who had granted consent for initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against Kamra. The bench asked the lawyer not to read the alleged contemptuous tweets of the comic artist in the open court, saying they have already gone through Venugopal’s letter on the issue. The consent of either the attorney general or the solicitor general is necessary under section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 for initiating contempt proceedings against a person. One of the petitions have been filed by a law student, Shrirang Katneshwarkar, who has claimed that Kamra had started publishing tweets on 11 November, when the top court was hearing the appeal of journalist Arnab Goswami against the Bombay High Court’s order rejecting his plea seeking interim bail in a 2018 abetment to suicide case.