Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Dec 6: Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri on Tuesday unconditionally apologised to the Delhi High Court for his comments about Justice S Muralidhar, who is currently the Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court and a former judge on the Delhi High Court.
Agnihotri submitted an affidavit to that effect in which he withdrew his criticism of the judge and offered his apologies.
However, a bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh requested that Agnihotri continue to be physically present in the courtroom during the hearing. In light of Agnihotri’s counsel’s request that the director be present in person for the subsequent hearing on March 16, 2023, it was decided to postpone the hearing.
“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 Court remarked.
Agnihotri had tweeted that Justice S Muralidhar was biassed since he had given activist Gautam Navlakha relief in the Bhima Koreev case. Agnihotri was the subject of contempt of court charges as a result of the tweets.
After seeing that the contestants were not represented, the Court made the decision to proceed ex-parte against Agnihotri as well as the other contestants, Anand Ranganathan, and Swarajya magazine, an online news source.
ALSO READ: Demonetisation policy followed rule book, Centre to SC
Agnihotri then submitted an affidavit in which he expressed his sincere regret. In addition, he made a motion to recall the ex-parte hearing order and to request authorization to take part in the proceedings.
Agnihotri in his affidavit said that he himself had deleted his tweets against the judge.
