‘I Am A Free Speech Absolutist, Did Not Comment On Justice Muralidhar’: Anand Ranganathan To Delhi High Court In Contempt Case

Appearing in person before the Delhi High Court in a suo motu criminal contempt case, author Anand Ranganathan on Wednesday called himself a “free speech absolutist” and said that he did not comment or post any tweet on Justice S Muralidhar.

A division bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Talwant Singh was hearing a suo motu criminal contempt case initiated by the court in 2018. The case relates to certain tweets made in 2018 against Justice Muralidhar, former judge of the High Court and present Chief Justice of Orissa High Court, in respect of an order passed by him quashing the order of house arrest and transit remand of activist Gautam Navlakha in the Bhima Koregaon case.

During the hearing today, Ranganathan’s counsel Advocate J Sai Deepak said that the tweet put by his client was not with respect to the issue in question and that an affidavit will be filed making the position clear.

Appearing in person, Ranganathan addressed the court and said: “I am a free speech absolutist. I am honoured to be here. I didn't comment on what the judge said.”

Hearing this, Justice Mridul orally said: “So long as whatever you said is not scandalous, you are free to say anything.”

“We are all for free speech. There are occasions when after we have said something, we regret saying that,” Justice Mridul added.

The bench then granted four weeks’ time to Ranganathan for filing his response in the matter and said that “we are not saying anything further about his appearance.”

As Justice Mridul said that the court was earlier informed that Ranganathan had said [in a tweet] that “he will go down fighting” and will not apologise, Ranganathan said: “I never said that.”

Justice Mridul then said: “Oh okay. As long as we're clear on that...”.

The matter will now be heard on October 11. The proceedings were initiated after Senior Advocate Rajshekhar Rao wrote a letter to the court stating that the tweet was a deliberate attempt to attack a sitting high court judge.

In April, the court discharged Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri, who was another contemner, in the matter after he appeared in person, expressed his remorse and tendered an unconditional apology.

In September 2022, the court had directed to proceed ex parte against Swarajya news portal, Anand Ranganathan and others who did not appear in the matter.

Title: Court In Its Own v. S Gurumurthy