New Delhi: Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri Tuesday apologised to the high court here for his tweets against Justice S Muralidhar, who is current Chief Justice of Orissa HC and was a former Delhi HC judge.
An affidavit to that effect was filed by Agnihotri withdrawing his statement against the judge and tendering his apology.
A division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh deferred the hearing after recording Agnihotri’s submission that he shall remain present personally in court for the hearing March 16, 2023, to tender his apology.
“We are asking him (Agnihotri) to remain present because he is the contemnor. Does he have any difficulty if he has to express remorse in person? The remorse cannot always be expressed by way of an affidavit,” the bench said.
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Agnihotri had put out tweets alleging bias against Justice Muralidhar.
Pursuant to the tweets, contempt of court proceedings were initiated against the director.
Agnihotri’s tweets were regarding the judge granting relief to activist Gautam Navlakha in the Bhima Koregaon case.
In September, the court had decided to proceed ex-parte against Agnihotri. Post which, he filed an affidavit expressing apology.
Agnihotri had mentioned in his affidavit that he himself had deleted his tweets against the judge.
However, the Amicus Curiae Senior Advocate Arvind Nigam pointed out that it could be the social media platform that deleted the tweets and not Agnihotri himself.