Observing that reckless and baseless allegations against judges strike at the very foundation of judicial independence, which cannot be allowed, the Supreme Court on April 20 refused to interfere in contempt proceedings against the lawyer of Disha Salian’s father. Disha Salian was the manager of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput. The lawyer, Nilesh Ojha, had made various accusations against a Bombay high court judge, including that he was associated with a political party, during a press conference on the Disha death case last year.
“The act of carrying a pending judicial controversy into the public domain in a manner that tends to sensationalise the proceedings or scandalise the institution or its constitutional component, i.e. the judges, is wholly inconsistent with the discipline expected of an advocate,” the apex court said on Salian’s lawyer.
Disha’s father had moved the Bombay high court in 2025, seeking a fresh probe into the mysterious circumstances under which his daughter was found dead in June 2020. Sushant Singh Rajput committed suicide a few days after Disha’s death although no connection between the two was established.
Dismissing the plea of the lawyer, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta said, allegations of this character, if left unchecked, possess an inherent tendency to erode public confidence in the administration of justice. “A clear distinction must be maintained between assailing the correctness of a judicial decision and personalising the grievance by attributing motives to the judge concerned,” the bench said.