A day after whistleblower and YouTuber ‘Savukku’ Shankar was sentenced to jail for remarks against the judiciary, NGO Arappor Iyakkam on Friday, September 16, questioned the Madras High Court’s judgment and said that it “raises concerns”. On Thursday, the court sentenced Shankar to six months’ imprisonment after holding him guilty of criminal contempt. In a statement, Arappor Iyakkam said that the hearing and the judgment was done in a “hurried manner”, and alleged that Shankar was not given sufficient time to defend himself.
The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court sentenced whistleblower and former Tamil Nadu Vigilance Department official ‘Savukku’ Shankar to six months of simple imprisonment. The court held him guilty of criminal contempt saying that he had ‘shown no remorse’ despite a history of similar contempt cases. The case pertains to six separate comments made by Shankar in interviews that he had given to two YouTube channels and in an article he had written and published on the website savukkuonline.com.
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In its statement, the NGO said that “the Supreme Court has often highlighted the key principle of law that justice should not only be done but also be seen to be done”. It also alluded to Justice GR Swaminathan, who was part of the bench, and had initiated the contempt proceedings against Shankar after observing that he had ‘crossed the Lakshman Rekha’ with one of his tweets regarding the case against right-wing YouTuber Maridhas. “The manner of the constitution of the bench, with one of the judges having already invoked contempt proceedings against ‘Savukku’ Shankar also being part of this bench, is equally a matter of concern. This concern remains even though the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court constituted this bench,” the statement read. “Although the bench, in its order convicting ‘Savukku’ Shankar, noted that invoking the doctrine of broad shoulders will be seen as a weakness on the part of the Judiciary in this case, we nevertheless feel that the court could have been more restrained in the matter of sentence,” it added.
It also said that the conviction of ‘Savukku’ Shankar for contempt will have a "chilling effect" on common citizens, preventing them from voicing their grievances about the judicial system and its functioning. The organisation also called punishment for contempt of court as “colonial vintage” which has no place in the law books of independent India, and demanded the repeal of the law. “It is a matter of regret that the contempt of court power continues to be used in India even when there is widespread consensus that this law, which is of colonial vintage, has no place in the law books of Independent India. We call upon all democratic-minded citizens to renew the demand that the criminal powers under the ‘Contempt of Court’ law should be repealed,” it noted.