BREAKING : No Suo Moto Contempt Initiated Against Rajdeep Sardesai; Case Status Shown Inadvertently, Says Supreme Court

The Supreme Court sources have clarified that no suo moto criminal contempt proceedings have been initiated against senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and that the status of case shown at the SC Website as Suo Moto Case(Criminal) 2/2020(the case registered against Sardesai) has been placed "inadvertently".

It was also said that appropriate action to rectify the same is under process.

At the time of this publication, the case status section of the Supreme Court website was down.

On Tuesday evening, it came to public knowledge that a suo moto criminal contempt case has been registered against journalist Rajdeep Sardesai as SMC(Crl) 2/2020.

The case related to a complaint filed by one Aastha Khurana last year over some of the tweets made by Sardesai against the judiciary. In September 2020, the Attorney General for India, KK Venugopal, had declined consent to initiate criminal contempt on the complaint. The AG had observed that the tweets were not serious enough to undermine the majesty of the Court.

Following that, the Khurana directly filed a petition in the Supreme Court. As per the information retrieved from the official website, the complaint was filed on September 21, 2020.

On February 9, 2021, an interlocutory application was filed seeking permission for suo moto action in view of the consent declined by the Attorney General. On February 13, the case was registered as In Re: Rajdeep Sardesai with the number SMC(Crl) 2/2020.

Now, the SC says that the case status is shown "inadvertently" and appropriate action to rectify the same is underway.