A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh of the Delhi high court on December 6 directed filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri to appear in court in person and apologise in a criminal contempt case over his remarks against a judge. “We are asking him to remain present because he is the alleged contemner. He has to be present and show remorse in person… Does he have any difficulty if he has to express remorse in person? The remorse cannot always be expressed by way of an affidavit,” the bench said.
Agnihotri’s lawyer submitted the the filmmaker had deleted his 2018 tweets against Justice S. Muralidhar, then a judge of the Delhi high court and now the Orissa high court Chief Justice. However, the amicus curiae told the court that it was Twitter which had removed the tweets.
The application filed by Vivek Agnihotri to be permitted to participate in the suo moto criminal contempt proceedings was filed after the court decided in September to proceed ex parte against him and other alleged contemnors, Anand Ranganathan and Swarajya, an online news portal, after noting that they were not appearing in court during the proceedings. The high court on December 6 allowed the application and said that in the interest of justice, Agnihotri was permitted to participate in the contempt proceedings and asked him to remain present in the court on March 16, 2023.
