Can you be punished for insulting the Court?

Recently, the Supreme Court had taken notice of some tweets by lawyer Prashant Bhushan, and asked him to justify his statements about the judiciary. On 27th June 2020, Prashant Bhushan had tweeted: 

‘When historians in future look back at the last 6 years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the Supreme Court in this destruction, & more particularly the role of the last 4 CJIs’

Today, the Supreme Court passed a judgement against Bhushan for making such statements. The Court has found him guilty of committing criminal contempt of court.

What is contempt of court?

Contempt of court basically means disrespecting the court in any way. In India, you can be punished by the court if you disrespect the court or show contempt towards courts. The law regulating this is the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.

There are two types of contempt of court: Civil contempt and Criminal contempt.

Civil contempt

If you deliberately disobey any judgement, direction, order, or other process of the court, then you are disrespecting the court and this will be considered as civil contempt. Further, if you purposely violate an undertaking (an agreement or a promise) that you have given to the court, it is civil contempt of court.

Criminal contempt

Criminal contempt of court happens when you disrespect the court by publishing anything or doing something that: 

• lowers the authority of any court 
• influences or interferes with any judicial proceeding (like a legal case being heard by the court) 
• obstructs the judicial process in any other way

What is not considered as contempt of court?

You are allowed to publish fair and accurate reports of court proceedings related to any pending legal case, unless this has been prohibited by the court. You are also permitted to publish a fair analysis of any final judgement given by the court after deciding a case.

Punishment for contempt of court 

If you disrespect the court through civil or criminal contempt of court, you can be punished with imprisonment for up to six months and/or a fine up to two thousand rupees. The punishment may be cancelled if you apologise to the court and the court is satisfied with your apology.

The Supreme Court judgement

In its judgement today, the Supreme Court said that a citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1) of our Constitution. So, a citizen is allowed to make a fair criticism of a judge, judiciary and its functioning. If a constructive criticism is made in order to enable systemic correction in the system, the Court will not look into the issue of contempt.

However, the right to speech has certain reasonable restrictions, and an attempt has to be made to properly balance the right and the restrictions. The Court held that if a citizen exceeds the limits and makes a statement which tends to scandalize the judges and institution of administration of justice, such an action could be considered as contempt of court.

Further, the Court said that if a citizen makes a statement which tends to undermine the dignity and authority of the Court, or a statement which tends to shake the public confidence in the judicial institutions, this will come within the scope of ‘criminal contempt’.

When a statement is made against a judge as an individual, contempt of court will not apply. However, when the statement is made against a judge as a ‘judge’, and which has an adverse effect in the administration of justice, the Court can look into the issue of contempt of court. The Supreme Court analysed Bhushan’s tweet and expressed that the tweet is against the entire Supreme Court in its functioning of the last six years, thus tending to create disrespect for the authority of the Court.