Attorney-General KK Venugopal gave his consent on Tuesday for the initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against YouTuber Ajeet Bharti for his “scurrilous” and “derogatory” remarks about the Supreme Court and its judges in one of his videos, Live Law reported.
In his letter, the AG said he found that “the contents of the video which has been watched by about 1.7 lakh viewers are vituperative, gross and highly derogatory to the Supreme Court of India and the judiciary as a whole, being clearly intended to denigrate the courts.”
“The allegations made by Mr Ajeet Bharti against the Supreme Court are, among other things, of bribery, favouritism and abuse of power,” he noted, adding that whatever the motive behind these “scurrilous statements,” the speaker would have known that the result would be to attract the contempt jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
“There can be no doubt that the statements in question would lower the authority of the Court in the eyes of the public and obstruct the administration of justice,” he further said, adding that he thus had no hesitation in granting his consent to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against Bharti.
Bharti, who is the editor and co-founder of a YouTube channel named DO Politics that describes itself with the tagline, “We break news, not the nation,” uploaded a video on June 24 titled Ajeet Bharti Roasts Supreme Court, High Courts. The video currently has 2,16,138 views.
Translated from Hindi to English, some of the phrases from the video mentioned in the letter seeking the AG’s consent to initiate proceedings against Bharti, include the latter mentioning that the apex court harasses those criticising it “at its fucking will” using their contempt proceedings and that judges are “blackmailed” to hear terrorist’s plea of Human Rights at midnight without giving importance to relevant issues.
Bharti also referred to senior advocate Prashant Bhushan’s case in the Supreme Court and said “the entire judicial system was his mistress and he made them dance and they did.”
While speaking about West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s post-poll violence case, Bharti asked what he should do but “spit on the courts” for recusing themselves from her case on technical grounds.
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“Our blind, deaf and lame judges cannot see the agendas brewing in the garb of protests. The blind goddess of justice is weighing vegetables in its balance, and the sword of justice, on the other hand, has been so rusted from all the blood money that it has practically a protective case now,” he said.
Previously, in December, AG Venugopal had also given his consent to initiate proceedings against comedian Kunal Kamra, following a series of tweets in which he criticised the Supreme Court as the “Supreme Joke of this country,” along with Rachita Taneja, cartoonist and creator of the webcomic Sanitary Panels, for her stick-figure cartoons criticising the apex court. Their criticisms came in the wake of the Supreme Court granting bail to Republic TV chief Arnab Goswami.