August 14, 2020: The Supreme Court on Friday held lawyer Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt for tweets against the court, and Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad Arvind Bobde.

A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra said the court will hear the arguments on the quantum of punishment on August 20.

The senior lawyer can be punished with a simple imprisonment for a term which may extend up to six months or with a fine of up to Rs 2,000 or with both.

Bhushan had posted two tweets, one on the Supreme Court on June 27 and the second one on CJI Bobde on June 29. He was served notice by the apex court on July 22.

The top court had on August 5 reserved its verdict in the matter after Bhushan defended his two alleged contemptuous tweets saying they were against the judges regarding their conduct in their personal capacity and they did not obstruct administration of justice.

The first tweet, reproduced in the court, said: “When historians in the future look back at the last six years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the SC in this destruction, and more particularly the role of the last four CJIs.” The second tweet said: “The CJI rides a Rs 50-lakh motorcycle belonging to a BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] leader at Raj Bhavan, Nagpur, without wearing a mask or helmet, at a time when he keeps the SC on lockdown mode denying citizens their fundamental right to access justice!”

The bench had also added Twitter India as a party to the matter. Appearing for Twitter, senior advocate Sajan Poovayya submitted that “Twitter Inc., California, USA is the correct description on which the tweets were made” by Bhushan and urged the court to replace Twitter India with it.

He said Twitter had nothing to defend and will act if the court directs it to disable the tweet identified by the Registry. He said Twitter cannot disable a tweet without the court’s order.