New Delhi, Jan 16: The Supreme Court ordered a lawyer on Tuesday to give a proper, unconditional apology to the judges he had targeted, stating that it was not satisfied with the nature of the apology. The lawyer had been found guilty of criminal contempt and sentenced to six months in jail for making “scandalous, unwarranted, and baseless imputations” against several judges of the Delhi High Court and district courts in the nation’s capital. On January 9, the Delhi High Court found the lawyer guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him to six months in prison in addition to a Rs 2,000 fine. Additionally, it had mandated that he be placed under arrest and turned over to the Tihar jail administrator.Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud‘s bench gave the attorney one more chance to submit a formal apology. This isn’t a sincere regret. This apology is fabricated. How can he claim that was genuine and unintentional? After reviewing the lawyer’s apology, the bench—which also included Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra—stated that he needed to submit a formal apology. The attorney for the client entered an unconditional affidavit into the record as the hearing got underway, stating that his client had also made a spoken apology and had already been incarcerated for a week. The Supreme Court set a hearing date for January 19 and gave him one more chance to submit an apology.The high court stated in its decision that such acts needed to be checked with a “firm hand” because the attorney who made the libellous accusations was an officer of the court. In July 2022, he entered a plea before a high court bench consisting of only one judge, in which he accused multiple judges of behaving biasedly, irrationally, or arbitrarily. In his plea, he had listed the judges as well.
