Plea for criminal contempt proceedings against Swara Bhaskar dismissed
New Delhi:
The Attorney General of India has dismissed a plea to initiate criminal contempt proceedings against actor Swara Bhaskar for comments on the top court’s verdict in the Babri Masjid and Ayodhya land dispute case; the comments were described by the petitioner as “derogatory”, “scandalous” and an “attack on the institution”.
On Sunday evening Attorney General KK Venugopal said the comment was the “perception of the speaker” and did not “offer any comment on the Supreme Court itself or say anything that would scandalise or tend to scandalise… the authority of the Supreme Court”.
“In my opinion, this statement does not constitute criminal contempt,” the Attorney General said.
According to news agency ANI, in February this year Ms Bhaskar attended a panel discussion organised by a group called “Mumbai Collective”, at which she allegedly made “derogatory and scandalous statements in the context of the Supreme Court of India”.
The statement, written out in full in the Attorney General’s letter today, read: “We are living in a country where the Supreme Court of our country states that the demolition of the Babri Masjid was unlawful and, in the same judgment, rewards the same people who brought down the mosque”.
In November last year the Supreme Court ruled that the formerly disputed land in Ayodhya belonged entirely to the deity Ram Lalla, or the infant Lord Ram.
The court, however, also said that the razing of the 16th century Babri masjid in December 1992 was unlawful and a “calculated act of destroying a place of public worship”.
