Judge tweet: Editor Gurumurthy refuses to apologise once again in HC

S Gurumurthy, the editor of a Chennai-based Tamil news magazine, Thursday refused to file another affidavit tendering an unconditional apology for his tweet against Justice S Muralidhar.

Gurumurthy's counsel said the journalist has already tendered his apology in relation to a tweet and there is no necessity for him to file another affidavit conveying an unconditional apology in clear terms.

A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh noted that the 2018 affidavit did not contain any apology and if the journalist files an affidavit with a two-line apology, the court can put quietus to the issue.

The bench said the earlier affidavit was merely a reply on merits of the matter.

Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, representing Gurumurthy, the editor of Tamil political weekly Thuglak and a former RSS ideologue, said the tweet was deleted after the court took cognisance of the matter.

He said Gurumurthy had no intention of committing contempt and had even appeared before the bench which was then hearing the case.

As the bench said the journalist can express remorse by filing the affidavit and the matter will end, Jethmalani said he cannot compel his client to do that.

The bench then said it will hear the issue on merits on July 6, the next date of hearing.

“Mahesh Jethmalani, senior counsel appears for Gurumurthy and states that he has obtained instructions from the latter and it is their position that he has already tendered his apology in relation to the subject tweet and therefore there is no necessity for him to file a further affidavit expressing an unconditional apology in clear terms. List for further proceedings on July 6," the high court said.

Earlier in March 2018, the high court had dubbed as "mischievous" certain tweets by the journalist in connection with its decision granting interim protection from arrest to Karti Chidambaram, son of senior Congress leader P Chidambaram in the INX Media money laundering case.

In October 2019, the high court had dropped the contempt proceedings against Gurumurthy in another case for having re-tweeted an article against Justice S Muralidhar.

The contempt proceedings were initiated by the high court in 2018.

After the high court's division bench headed by Justice S Muralidhar passed the order on October 1, 2018, releasing rights activists Gautam Navlakha from house arrest in the Koregaon-Bhima violence case, Gurumurthy had posted a tweet accusing Justice Muralidhar of bias.

The high court, which took up the matter after receiving a letter from advocate Rajshekhar Rao seeking contempt action against the journalist, had said the tweets and online video making allegations against the judge be taken down.