The Supreme Court will on Friday pronounce its verdict on a batch of petitions seeking contempt proceedings against stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra and cartoonist Rachita Taneja for alleged contemptuous remarks against the top court and the Chief Justice of India.

A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan, R. Subhash Reddy and M.R. Shah on Thursday, after briefly hearing arguments on behalf of the petitioners, reserved its verdict and said it would pronounce orders on Friday as to whether Kamra and Taneja can be prosecuted for contempt or not.

In the case of Kamra, the plea for contempt has been initiated by Aurangabad-based law student Shrirang Katneshwarkar and Pune-based advocate Abhishek Sharad Raskar.

Advocate Nishant Katneshwarkar, who appeared for the law student, told the court that far from being remorseful, Kamra had chosen to launch personal attacks on the CJI. He did not read out Kamra’s tweets against the CJI and said it would not be proper to do so in open court.

“Even after someone pointed out that he would be liable for contempt, he (Kamra) says, ‘You mean contempt of joke?’ He’s comparing the Supreme Court to a joke,” the counsel told the court.

Attorney-general K.K. Venugopal, the principal law officer of the government, had earlier granted consent for initiating criminal contempt proceedings against Kamra over his various tweets on the Supreme Court in November after the top court granted interim bail to Republic TV managing director Arnab Goswami.

Kamra’s social media posts were “not only in bad taste but clearly cross the line between humour and contempt of the court”, Venugopal had said in response to a request for consent to initiate contempt proceedings.

The impugned tweets by Kamra had said, “Honour has left the building (Supreme Court) long back” and “the Supreme Court of this country is the most Supreme joke of this country”.
He had also tweeted a picture of the Supreme Court building dressed in saffron colour with a BJP flag having replaced the Tricolour.

While refusing to withdraw the tweets, Kamra had made an objectionable hand gesture while referring to the CJI.

The bench also heard senior advocate P.S. Narasimha, appearing for another law student who has sought contempt proceedings against cartoonist Taneja for three of her art works allegedly implying that the Supreme Court was hand-in-glove with the BJP.

One of the cartoons related to Republic TV’s Goswami, the other alluding a link between the Supreme Court and the Sangh parivar and the other on the Ayodhya dispute.
Narasimha said: “…The tweets… (are) intended to scandalise the court.”