Vivek Agnihotri to appear before Delhi HC over tweets against judge

The Delhi High Court on Thursday directed filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri to appear before it on April 10 to tender an apology for his tweets against Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court, S. Muralidhar.

In December last year, Agnihotri had apologised to the Delhi High Court for his remarks but it had deferred the hearing after recording his submission that he will remain present personally in court for the hearing on March 16.

However, Agnihotri appeared via video conferencing on Thursday and said that he has fever.

The court then listed the matter for April 10.

An affidavit was filed by Agnihotri withdrawing his statement against the judge and tendering his apology.

A division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh had deferred the hearing last time.

"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 bench had said.

Agnihotri had put out tweets against Justice Muralidhar. Pursuant to the tweets, Agnihotri had put alleging bias against Justice Muralidhar.

As a result, contempt of court proceedings were initiated against the director.

Agnihotri's tweets were regarding the judge granting relief to activist Gautam Navlakha in the Bhima Koregaon case.

In September 2022, the court had decided to proceed ex-parte against Agnihotri. Post which, he filed an affidavit expressing apology.

Agnihotri had mentioned in his affidavit that he himself had deleted his tweets against the judge.

However, the Amicus Curiae Senior Advocate Arvind Nigam had pointed out that it could be the social media platform which deleted the tweets and not Agnihotri himself.