New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed some reservations regarding the petitioners, who have filed cases in connection with the Pegasus issue, from conducting “parallel proceedings and parallel debates” on social media while the Court is seized of the issue and is dealing with it.
The senior advocates representing the petitioners agreed that they will accordingly advise the petitioners.
Continuing, Chief Justice N V Ramana addressed senior advocate Kapil Sibal: “You are not only a senior counsel but we respect you a lot. You have been a minister also. There must be some discipline…we ask some questions from all of you, in the adjudication, the bench will ask questions! Sometimes it will be inconvenient, but both sides have to face this music. We expect answers. That does not mean that proceedings have taken place. This is the process. This is all we want to request you. If the petitioners want to say anything or bring anything to the notice of the Court, they can file an additional affidavit, we are allowing everybody”
“Absolutely, I entirely agree with you. When the matter is in court, there should be no public statements of any nature…”, agreed Sibal.
However, he added that when he was appearing for former Editor of The Hindu and a petitioner in the matter, N. Ram, the bench had put to him a question as regards to observations of the California Court on Indian journalists and others being targets of Pegasus, which had resulted in “mud being thrown” for allegedly making false claims in the petition.
“Your Lordships said to me that I had said that Indians have been targeted but the California court has not said so…”, Sibal submitted.
“This is the problem, that is taking the sentence out of context. I had a problem whether I had read properly or not. That is why I put the question. This is not correct. You should not cross the limits for anybody. We are following the procedure and system, they must have faith in the system,” observed the CJI.
