New Delhi: The Delhi High Court today dubbed as “mischievous” certain tweets by the editor of a Chennai-based Tamil language weekly news magazine in connection with its decision granting interim protection from arrest to Karti Chidambaram, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, till March 20 in the INX Media money laundering case.
A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and I S Mehta said the “mischievous innuendo”, posted by Swaminathan Gurumurthy, the editor of ‘Thuglak’magazine, within a few hours of the court’s March 9 order in the INX media case, immediately invited responses which “spread the misinformation in the innuendo several times over, not sparing the judge presiding over the matter, nor the judiciary”.
The high court, which took up the issue on its own after judges from Tamil Nadu forwarded the tweets made by the editor to it, said one of the two tweets by the senior scribe was “directly attacking the Supreme Court”. The bench also noted that despite tweets by others in response to the innuendo and clarifying the correct position, “he (editor) cared not to withdraw the mischievous and false tweet”.
The editor had posed a question as to whether Justice Muralidhar, who was part of the bench which had passed the order granting protection to Karti Chidambaram, was a junior of former UPA minister and senior advocate P Chidambaram.
The bench said it was not issuing any contempt of court notice to the editor now and asked the Centre, represented by Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Tushar Mehta and its standing counsel Amit Mahajan, to consider whether such tweets have the tendency to scandalise the legal profession and what appropriate remedial action was required in the instant case.
The court, which took suo motu cognisance of the issue, said while it was conscious that such tweets were “ill informed” and “are best ignored”, but since the person in question was an editor of a popular magazine having over 259,000 followers, it considered it appropriate to place the correct information. During the brief hearing, ASG Mehta said that posts on social media should be ignored as they are irresponsible and the courts would not be able to function if they take cognisance of such things. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Karti, said even he has been subjected to abuses and threats on the twitter for which there has been often no recourse. He said such social media activity should not be ignored but a stern message sent. In its March 9 order, the high court had also made it clear that if the special court granted Karti bail in the corruption case registered by the CBI, the ED will not arrest him till the next hearing before the high court on March 20.
