Alleged stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra could soon find out that his tweets mocking India’s Supreme Court were no joking matter.
India’s Attorney General KK Venugopal has granted consent for initiating criminal contempt against Kunal Kamra for his alleged derogatory tweets against a Supreme Court judge. The permission for initiating criminal proceedings had been sought by Mumbai-based lawyer, Rizwan Siddiquee, in a letter to the Attorney General.
Rizwan Siddiquee had said that Kamra’s tweets on a judgment passed by the Supreme Court, his unsavoury comments on the Justice DY Chandrachud, and the circulation of a morphed image of the Supreme Court premises which were published on Twitter amounted to a “manifest attempt to lower the authority of the Supreme Court of India.”
Kunal Kamra had sent out a series of tweets against the Supreme Court after it had granted bail to Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami. “The Supreme Court of this country is the the most Supreme joke of this country…” he’d tweeted.
He had followed it up with a tweet in which he’d morphed the Supreme Court in a shade of saffron, and replaced India’s flag on it with the flag of the BJP.
He had also said that the Supreme Court should replace Mahatma Gandhi’s statue with that of Harish Salve. Harish Salve is the decorated lawyer who’d represented Kulbhushan Jadhav in the International Court of Justice, and was also representing Arnab Goswami.
He had also directly attacked the judge who’d delivered bail to Arnab Goswami, calling him a flight attendant. “DY Chandrachud is a flight attendant serving champagne to first class passengers after they’re fast tracked through, while commoners don’t know if they’ll ever be boarded or seated, let alone served,” he said.
Rizwan Siddiquee had written to the attorney General saying that if such unruly and salacious statements made by influencers like Kunal Kamra were allowed to go unchecked, then other people too would follow the same path, and make reckless allegations when a judgment is not in their favour.
Now it would be hard to imagine why Kunal Kamra thinks he’s an expert in legal matters — he had enrolled for a degree in Commerce in Jai Hind college, but dropped out after the first year. He also has proudly said in interviews that he’s never read a book in his life. But he seems to be steadfast in his belief that the Supreme Court of India acted unfairly when it granted bail to Arnab Goswami.
This isn’t the first time when Kunal Kamra has sought to attack Goswami — earlier this year, he had accosted Goswami on an Indigo flight and unleashed a deranged rant at him, which had led to him be banned from flying on all Indian airlines for 6 months.
