Website showing suo motu cognizance of contempt plea against Sardesai “an inadvertent mistake”: SC

The Supreme Court of India has clarified that it has not initiated criminal contempt of court proceedings against journalist Rajdeep Sardesai and the Court's website which showed that it had taken suo motu cognizance of a contempt plea against Sardesai, was "an inadvertent mistake".

"This is in context with news item being flashed in some news channels about initiating suo moto criminal contempt proceeding against Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai by Supreme court, it is made clear that no such proceeding has been initiated against Mr. Rajdeep Sardesai . However status shown at Supreme Court website vide case no. SMC (Crl) 02/2021 has been placed inadvertently. Appropriate action to rectify the same is under process," a statement by the Supreme Court said.

The apex court website had showed that the case against Sardesai was registered by the Supreme Court based on a petition by one Aastha Khurana.

The petition was filed by Khurana in September 2020 but was registered as a suo motu criminal contempt case in February 2021.

Earlier, Attorney General KK Venugopal had refused to grant consent to Khurana to initiate contempt proceedings against Sardesai.