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The Delhi High Court on Thursday, 26 April, issued a notice to an editor of a Chennai-based news magazine on a plea seeking contempt proceedings against him for allegedly criticising the court order granting protection from arrest to Karti Chidambaram in the INX Media money laundering case.
A bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and PS Teji sought the response of Swaminathan Gurumurthy, editor of Thuglak, a Tamil weekly magazine, on a petition filed by the Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA).
The petition had sought punishment for the editor for "lowering the authority" of the court by posting certain tweets in connection with its decision to protect Karti, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, from arrest till 20 March.
The editor has, however, claimed that his tweets were not against the judges.
The petition alleged that the editor never tendered an apology for making "scandalous" allegations against a judge of the division bench which had passed the order.
The editor, in his tweets soon after the 9 March order, had posed a question as to whether Justice Muralidhar, who was part of the bench which had passed the order granting protection to Karti, was a junior of former UPA minister and senior advocate P Chidambaram.
A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and I S Mehta had on 12 March taken up the issue on its own after judges from Tamil Nadu forwarded the tweets in question to it.
The bench had dubbed as "mischievous" certain tweets by Gurumurthy, saying the tweets, posted within a few hours of the court's 9 March order in the INX media case, immediately invited responses which spread "misinformation in the innuendo several times over by not sparing the judge presiding over the matter nor the judiciary.”
The court, which had taken suo motu cognisance of the issue, said that while it was conscious that such tweets were "ill informed" and were "best ignored,” but since the person in question was an editor of a popular magazine having over 259,000 followers, it considered it appropriate to place the correct information.
In its 9 March order, the High Court had also made it clear that if the special court granted Karti bail in the corruption case registered by the CBI, the ED would not arrest him till the next hearing before the High Court on 20 March.
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