AG Venugopal consents contempt proceedings against comic illustrator Rachita Taneja for criticising Top Court

Shweta Tambade

Attorney General KK Venugopal has given his nod to begin the contempt proceedings against artist Rachita Taneja for her tweets over the Supreme Court ruling in Arnab Goswami’s abetment to suicide case last month.

The Attorney General wrote in his letter that Rachita Taneja’s Twitter handle @sanitarypanels had posted a line of illustrations against the apex court and observed it as “audacious assault and insult to the institution.”

Republic TV editor, Arnab Goswami was arrested and taken to Taloja jail in the suicide case of Anvay Naik and his mother in 2018. A week later, the Supreme Court granted Arnab interim bail.

The two-judge bench, constituting Justices D Y Chandrachud and Indira Banerjee, conversed with the Maharashtra government about the arrest of the editor of Republic TV.

The Bench said, “If we as a constitutional court do not lay down law and protect liberty, then who will?”

The illustration depicted by the cartoonist Rachita Taneja portrayed Arnab with the ruling party BJP and the Supreme Court by his side.

It showed Arnab saying “Tu janta nahi mera baap kaun hai” suggesting that the Supreme Court was partial towards the ruling party.

Another tweet from the cartoonist referred to the SC as the “Sanghi Court of India.” The Supreme Court indicated it to be audacious and disrespectful.

The tweet contained “Arnab gets bail, real journalists get jail, independent judiciary is fail.”

The AG responded to the tweet in his letter saying –

“…carries a gross insinuation against the Apex Court of this country to the effect that the Supreme Court has ceased to be an impartial organ of the State. The tweet is clearly calculated to undermine the public confidence in the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court of India.”

In a letter to the Attorney General, Aditya Kashyap, a law student requested the proceedings to initiate contempt. The Twitter handle of Rachita Taneja also posts skeptical tweets about the Modi government and other national policies.

Last month the AG had sanctioned for initiating contempt proceedings, against Kunal Kamra, a stand-up comedian, over his tweets.

Kunal Kamra also tweeted “The Supreme Court of this country is the most Supreme joke of India” criticising the Arnab Goswami ruling.

Refusing to apologize for his tweets, Kamra said, “All that I tweeted was from my view of the Supreme Court of India giving a partial decision in favour of a Prime Time Loudspeaker… I don’t intend to retract my tweets or apologise for them. I believe they speak for themselves.”