Comedian Kunal Kamra faces contempt charges after posting tweets about SC

Attorney General K K Venugopal Thursday granted consent for initiation of contempt proceedings against stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra for his tweets which allegedly criticised the Supreme Court. “The tweets which I am extracting below are not only in bad taste but clearly cross the line tween humour and contempt of the court”, said Venugopal in his letter to one of the applicants who had sought consent of the top law officer for initiation of contempt proceedings against Kamra. “I therefore grant consent to proceed by way of initiating contempt proceedings against Kunal Kamra,” Venugopal said in his letter.

In one of the letters seeking Attorney General’s consent for initiation of contempt proceedings against Kamra, three lawyers have claimed that he allegedly attempted to “lower the authority of the Supreme Court of India” through his tweets after the apex court had granted interim bail to Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami. One of the lawyers, Mumbai-based Riswan Siddiquee sought the AG’s consent to initiate criminal contempt of court proceedings against Kamra. Siddiquee also brought to the fore that a picture posted by the comedian was a morphed image of the Supreme Court building. (With inputs from Press Trust of India)