No contempt of court proceedings against Rajdeep Sardesai: SC clarifies

The apex court said that the status shown on its website was an error placed "inadvertently".

In its clarification statement, the top court said, “No such proceeding has been initiated against Mr Rajdeep Sardesai. Status shown at Supreme Court website…has been placed inadvertently and appropriate action to rectify the same is under process.”

The clarification comes hours after the apex court's website showed that it had registered a suo motu contempt case against Sardesai for his tweets allegedly criticising the judiciary.

The case was registered by the Supreme Court based on a petition by one Aastha Khurana, media reports said.

The developments come five months after Attorney General KK Venugopal had turned down the request to initiate any criminal proceeding against the popular TV anchor on basis of the same complaint.

In his complaint, the petitioner has referred to two tweets made by Sardesai in July and August 2020.

While one of the tweets was in connection with the contempt case on lawyer Prashant Bhushan in which he was fined Re 1, the other tweet was about former Supreme Court Justice Arun Mishra.

"Breaking: Rs 1 token fine imposed by SC on @pbhushan1 in contempt case.. if he doesn’t pay it, then 3 months jail sentence! Clearly, court looking to wriggle out of an embarrassment of its own making," Sardesai had said in one of his tweets.