Updated: August 31, 2020 2:24 PM IST 
New Delhi: Lawyyer-activist Prashant Bhushan, held guilty of contempt for his tweets against the judiciary and Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, has been fined Re 1 by the Supreme Court on Monday. In case, Bhushan fails to pay the fine by September 15, he will have to undergo 3-month imprisonment and will be barred from practicing for 3 years.
My lawyer & senior colleague Rajiv Dhavan contributed 1 Re immediately after the contempt judgement today which I gratefully accepted pic.twitter.com/vVXmzPe4ss
— Prashant Bhushan (@pbhushan1) August 31, 2020
On August 14, the top court had held Bhushan guilty of criminal contempt for his derogatory tweets. A bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra had observed that for how long the system would suffer this. The bench which also comprises Justices B R Gavai and Krishna Murari noted that judges are condemned and their families are humiliated. “They cannot even speak”, said the 3-judge bench.
In the last hearing on August 24, Bhushan had refused to tender an unconditional apology for the tweets, saying what he expressed represented his bona fide belief which he continued to hold. “An insincere apology would amount to the contempt of my conscience and of an institution”, Bhushan had asserted in his supplementary statement filed in the suo motu (on its own) contempt case against him by the top court.
Notably, the 63-year-old former AAP leader was under the scanner for two of his tweets. The first one posted on June 27 alleged that the last four Chief Justices had played a role in the “destruction of democracy” during undeclared “emergency” for the last six years. Another tweet on June 29 alleged that the “present Chief Justice” rode a bike in Nagpur “while keeping the apex court in lockdown and denying citizens their right to access to justice”.
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