Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri tendered a written apology in the Delhi High Court on Tuesday in a criminal contempt case for his remarks against Justice S Muralidhar for granting relief to activist Gautam Navlakha.

However, the HC did not accept the apology affidavit and directed him to appear before it on March 16, 2023 and “show remorse in person”.

“We are asking him (Agnihotri) to remain present because he is the alleged contemnor. Does he have any difficulty to appear before this court? He has to be present and show remorse in person.  The remorse cannot always be expressed by way of an affidavit,” the bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Talwant Singh told Agnihotri’s lawyer.                

 His lawyer submitted that the filmmaker has tendered an unconditional apology in an affidavit in which he has also stated that he deleted his tweets against the judge himself. However, the court was informed by the amicus curiae that the submission was wrong and it was Twitter which deleted his tweets.  “All of this submission you can make once he is present before this court,” the bench told Agnihotri’s counsel.

Agnihotri had, in a tweet in October 2018, accused Justice Muralidhar, who was then a sitting judge of the Delhi High Court and is currently the Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court, of bias after he granted bail to Navlakha, an accused in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case, and ordered his release from house arrest.               

 The application was filed in the pending criminal contempt case in which the court had in September this year decided to proceed ex-parte against Agnihotri and other alleged contemnors, Anand Ranganathan and Swarajya magazine, an online news portal, after noting that they were not represented.              

 The court had initiated on its own the contempt proceedings after receiving a letter from senior advocate Rajshekhar Rao who alleged the tweet was a deliberate attempt to attack a sitting High Court judge.  The contempt proceedings were also initiated against S Gurumurthy, noted financial analyst and editor of the Chennai-based weekly ‘Thuglak’ magazine, for his tweets against the judge.