{"id":329621,"date":"2020-12-18T06:58:17","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T06:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=329621"},"modified":"2020-12-18T06:58:17","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T06:58:17","slug":"sc-issues-notices-to-kunal-kamra-rachita-taneja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/sc-issues-notices-to-kunal-kamra-rachita-taneja\/","title":{"rendered":"SC issues notices to Kunal Kamra, Rachita Taneja\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-305446 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Supreme-Court.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"660\" height=\"438\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/Supreme-Court.jpg 660w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/Supreme-Court-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2018\/11\/Supreme-Court-633x420.jpg 633w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 660px) 100vw, 660px\" \/>The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to stand up comedian Kunal Kamra and cartoonist Rachita Taneja on petitions seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against them for allegedly denigrating judiciary and judges.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">A Bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan asked them to file replies in six weeks. The court, however, said there is a need to appear in person before the court.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In the notices, the top court has asked them to explain why contempt proceedings\u00a0 should not be initiated against them for scandalising the judiciary.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The petitions were filed after attorney General KK Venugopal gave his consent to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">On November 11,\u00a0 Kamra posted a series of tweets mocking the top court, Chief Justice of India (CJI) SA Bobde and justice DY Chandrachud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">In one of his tweets, Kamra showed the Top Court in saffron colour with a BJP flag in place of the Tricolour. \u201cThe Supreme Court of this country is the the most Supreme joke of this country,\u201d he tweeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Kamra refused to apologise and said \u201cthe tweets I recently put out have been found in contempt of court. All that I tweeted was from my view of the Supreme Court of India giving a partial decision in favour of a Prime Time Loudspeaker.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">\u201cMy view hasn\u2019t changed because the silence of the Supreme Court of India on matters of other\u2019s personal liberty cannot go uncriticized. I don\u2019t intend to retract my tweets or apologise for them. I believe they speak for themselves,\u201d he added.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court on Friday issued notices to stand up comedian Kunal Kamra and cartoonist Rachita Taneja on petitions seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against them for allegedly denigrating judiciary and judges. A Bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan asked them to file replies in six weeks. The court, however, said there is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":305446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[36],"tags":[13795,13796,134],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329621"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=329621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329622,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329621\/revisions\/329622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/305446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}