Prashant Bhushan, however, continued to be defiant and said that he stood by his statements.

The Supreme Court of India on Thursday asked lawyer Prashant Bhushan to reconsider his his ‘defiant statement’ and refusing to apologise for his contemptuous tweets, to which the lawyer said that he will consult his team of lawyers and think over SC’s suggestion.

The SC said that it will give 2-3 days to Prashant Bhushan to reconsider Statement and apologize.

Earlier Supreme Court judge Justice Arun Mishra told Prashant Bhushan there is a Lakshman Rekha for everything, alluding to a set of norm or convention that should never be broken. The remark came on Thursday during the hearing on sentencing of Bhushan who was convicted of criminal contempt.

A bench headed by Justice Mishra told Prashant Bhushan if you do not balance your comments, then you will destroy the institution, and the court does not punish for contempt so easily. “Balancing has to be there; restraint has to be there. There is a Lakshman Rekha for everything. Why should you cross the Rekha?” said Justice Mishra.

Prashant Bhushan, however, continued to be defiant and said that he stood by his statements slamming the Supreme Court of India.

“I stand by my tweets. I do not ask for mercy. I do not ask for magnanimity. I shall submit cheerfully to whatever punishment the court imposes on me lawfully. What I said in the tweet is my bonafide belief,” he told the apex court.

Here is the full text of Prashant Bhushan’s statement:

I have gone through the judgment of this Hon’ble Court. I am pained that I have been held guilty of committing contempt of the Court whose majesty I have tried to uphold — not as a courtier or cheerleader but as a humble guard – for over three decades, at some personal and professional cost.

I am pained, not because I may be punished, but because I have been grossly misunderstood. I am shocked that the court holds me guilty of “malicious, scurrilous, calculated attack” on the institution of administration of justice. I am dismayed that the Court has arrived at this conclusion without providing any evidence of my motives to launch such an attack. I must confess that I am disappointed that the court did not find it necessary to serve me with a copy of the complaint on the basis of which the suo motu notice was issued, nor found it necessary to respond to the specific averments made by me in my reply affidavit or the many submissions of my counsel.

I find it hard to believe that the Court finds my tweet “has the effect of destabilizing the very foundation of this important pillar of Indian democracy”. I can only reiterate that these two tweets represented my bonafide beliefs, the expression of which must be permissible in any democracy.

Indeed, public scrutiny is desirable for healthy functioning of judiciary itself. I believe that open
criticism of any institution is necessary in a democracy, to safeguard the constitutional order. We are living through that moment in our history when higher principles must trump routine obligations, when saving the constitutional order must come before personal and professional niceties, when considerations of the present must not come in the way of discharging our responsibility towards the future. Failing to speak up would have been a dereliction of duty, especially for an officer of the court like myself.

My tweets were nothing but a small attempt to discharge what I considered to be my highest duty at this juncture in the history of our republic. I did not tweet in a fit of absence mindedness. It would be insincere and contemptuous on my part to offer an apology for the tweets that expressed what was and continues to be my bonafide belief. Therefore, I can only humbly paraphrase what the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had said in his trial: I do not ask for mercy. I do not appeal to magnanimity.

I am here, therefore, to cheerfully submit to any penalty that can lawfully be inflicted upon me for what the Court has determined to be an offence, and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.

Also Read: Is the mighty Supreme Court so scared of two tweets?