COURT IN ITS OWN MOTION Vs. S. GURUMURTHY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Present contempt petition was registered pursuant to order passed by Division Bench-I on 25/10/2018 taking cognizance of the articles/statements in respect of a sitting judge of this Court. Thereafter, Coordinate Bench of this Court, vide order dtd. 29/10/2018, impleaded John Doe parties as well as several intermediaries companies as contemnors/respondents and issued notices with direction to forthwith take down/remove/block/restrict the URL"s/weblinks, in respect of the offending video and articles in question.

(2.) Initially, ten respondents were impleaded as Contemnors. However, vide order dtd. 20/11/2018, Amended Memo of Parties was filed by learned counsel appearing on behalf of the petitioner and notices were issued to the newly impleaded respondents with similar direction.

(3.) During the pendency of the present petition, respondent Nos.16, 19 and 23 tendered unconditional apology for tweeting the post dtd. 3/9/2018 and were, accordingly, deleted from the array of parties on 17/7/2019. Since respondent Nos.6 to 11 and 17 were informed to be intermediaries, this Court order dtd. 22/4/2019 directed that no orders were required to be passed in respect of the above-said respondents.