Supreme Court Drops Contempt Case Against Prashant Bhushan And Tarun Tejpal

The Supreme Court today dropped a contempt case against Prashant Bhushan and journalist Tarun Tejpal filed in 2009 over their remarks against the judiciary.

A Bench of Justice Indira Banerjee, Justice Surya Kant and Justice M M Sundresh closed the proceedings after Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal informed that an apology has been tendered by Tarun Tejpal and Senior Advocate Kamini Jaiswal informed the Court that Bhushan has issued a clarification for his statement.

"In view of the apology tendered by the contemnors, we do not deem it necessary to proceed with the contempt. The contempt proceedings are dropped," the Bench said.

The Apex Court had in November 2009 issued contempt notice to Bhushan and Tejpal for allegedly casting aspersions on some sitting and former top court judges in an interview to a news magazine. Tejpal was then editor of the magazine.

In response to the 2009 contempt case, Bhushan had told the Apex Court that making corruption charges against the judges would not amount to contempt of court and mere utterance of corruption charge could not be contempt of court.

With PTI inputs