NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Thursday asked filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri to appear before it on April 10 in a contempt case related to his remarks on Twitter against its former judge and current Chief Justice of Orissa High Court Justice S Muralidhar and others.
A suo motu contempt petition was filed against the filmmaker following the tweet. In December last year, Agnihotri tendered an unconditional apology before the High Court for his remarks against the judge. During the hearing, his counsel highlighted his earlier apology in the case and submitted that his client could not appear before the court on Thursday due to a high fever.
To this, the high court questioned when he would be present. “We’re not asking. We have directed you. There’s no question,” the court asserted and said Agnihotri is exempted for today as he is ill but he has to remain present the next day.
Counsel of scientist Anand Ranganathan, who also shared the alleged defamatory post, informed the court that his client is willing to participate in the proceedings. But the amicus curiae in the case pointed out that Ranganathan had tweeted that he will never apologise for his tweets.
As per the case, the suo motu contempt proceedings were initiated against filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, scientist Anand Ranganathan, and magazine and news portal Swarajya, following the RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy’s tweets alleging bias by Justice Muralidhar.
In his tweet, 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?’. Agnihotri has directed multiple films including The Tashkent Files and The Kashmir Files which emerged as one of the highest-grossing Indian films of 2022.