A Varanasi court, on Thursday, rejected the revision plea filed against a magistrate order that dismissed a petition asking for action on comedian Kunal Kamra for his tweet allegedly insulting the Indian National Flag, Bar and Bench reported.
Seeking to initiate contempt proceedings against the stand-up comedian, the revision petition was filed by advocate Saurabh Tiwari.
Dismissing the petition, the Fast Track Court at Varanasi upheld the order of the magistrate that was passed in December 2020. “The criminal revision is dismissed. The order in question dated 23.12.2020 passed by the subordinate court is confirmed,” Thursday’s order stated.
Tiwari’s revision petition was rejected in order to avoid multiple proceedings on the same matter. A similar case regarding the same set of tweets is already ongoing in the Supreme Court.
On November 12, 2020, Attorney General KK Venugopal had allowed proceedings against Kamra, following a series of tweets in which the comedian criticised the apex court as the “Supreme joke of this country.” Kamra’s criticism came after Republic TV’s editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami was granted bail in an abetment to suicide case.
The tweets, according to Venugopal, “attacked” the apex court and were “in bad taste” and “clearly crossed the line between humour and contempt of the court.”
The Kamra’s tweets also included a picture of a morphed saffron-coloured Supreme Court of India with a flag of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) replacing the National Flag.
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According to Tiwari, Kamra’s tweets hurt the feelings of people of this country causing “contempt and disrepute” to the Indian National Flag. Therefore, he sought to register a FIR under Section 2 of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971 and Sections 153B and 505 of the Indian Penal Code.
Kamra was issued a show cause notice in December and was asked to explain why contempt proceedings should not be taken against them.
In a counter affidavit filed by Kamra, he had stated that his tweets were not intended to insult the court but were rather a comedian’s perception used to make audience who shared the same view, laugh.