Critical Analysis of the Prashant Bhusan Contempt Case and its Impact on India’s Democracy

On the eve of 74th Independence Day, Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan was held liable for “serious contempt of court” by the Apex Court for publishing two tweets, which the court held to be “undoubtedly false, malicious and scandalous”. While going through the judgment, it’s easy to form opinioned ideas, that is, if one is of the opinion that freedom of speech and expression are of the utmost importance and must be protected at all cost, then they might find several reasons to criticize the judgment on many levels, but for those who believe that contempt of court laws are necessary so as to ensure the independence and proper administration of justice, they will uphold every aspect of the judgment. The arguments used in the judgement are not new, and in fact, no aspect of this situation is new or unique. We have in the past seen several cases of contempt of court. But like all other cases, the Prashant Bhushan case makes one wonder about the line which separates freedom of speech and contempt of court, which at times, does seem to get blurred. In this paper, an attempt has been made to study the line between dissent and imputing motive to a judge in context of the present case by analysing the judgement through the facts and various evidences available in public domain.