NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday discharged filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri in connection with a contempt case after he tendered an unconditional apology and expressed his remorse for alleged remarks against former HC judge Justice S Muralidhar.
A suo motu contempt petition was filed against him following his tweet against the judge, who in his order, quashed rights activist Gautam Navlakha's house arrest and transit remand in the Bhima Koregaon case in 2018. Agnihotri, who appeared before the court in person, tendered an unconditional apology before a division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Vikas Mahajan who took it into consideration.
“Vivek Agnihotri, the alleged contemnor who is arrayed as Respondent No. 4 is present before the court and reiterates his remorse as well as tenders an unconditional apology for the alleged offensive statement made by him,” it noted.
The court said, “In view of the foregoing and particular circumstance that Vivek Agnihotri has the utmost respect for the judiciary and did not intend to wilfully offend the majesty of the court, the notice to show cause as to why contempt should not be issued to him is recalled. He is discharged.”
The suo motu contempt proceedings were initiated against the filmmaker, scientist Anand Ranganathan, and magazine and news portal Swarajya, following the RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy’s tweets alleging bias by Justice Muralidhar.
He re-tweeted the link from a blog called ‘Drishtikone’ which had an article titled ‘Why has Delhi High Court Justice Muralidhar’s relationship with Gautam Navlakha not been disclosed?’ The article alleged that the Delhi High Court judge’s wife was a close friend of Navlakha and said Muralidhar’s reason for quashing the house arrest order was flimsy.