Activist 'Savukku' Shankar sentenced to six months jail in contempt case

Whistleblower and popular political commentator, ‘Savukku’ Shankar, was on Thursday sent to a jail for six months by the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court in a suo motu contempt proceedings against him for his statement that “the entire higher judiciary is riddled with corruption.”

Shankar, a suspended employee of the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC), runs a web portal under the name Savukku and is a regular on Tamil YouTube channels. A division bench of justices G R Swaminathan and B Pugalendhi had earlier this month initiated contempt proceedings against Shankar for his comments made in an interview to a Tamil YouTube channel.

Read | I stand by my remark on higher judiciary: Tamil Nadu YouTuber tells court

The bench sentenced Shankar to six months simple imprisonment and ordered that he be lodged in the Madurai Central Prison. It also directed the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to ensure that the “offending interviews” and article are taken down forthwith.

Appearing before the bench on Thursday morning, Shankar submitted his reply and argued that the contempt proceedings were “not maintainable” as the matter had not been forwarded to the Advocate General. In his submission, Shankar also said he was “deeply concerned” with the under-representation of the suppressed classes and the over-representation of Brahmins in higher judiciary.

During the first hearing on September 1, Shankar had admitted to having made the statement against the judiciary and that he stood by it. Shankar, who decided to argue for himself, did not even take help from legal aid for appointing a lawyer.

In the order, the Bench said Section 15 of the Act enables the High Court to take action on its own motion and there was no requirement to obtain the AG’s consent when such suo motu action is taken and Article 215 of the Constitution is invoked, there is no requirement to obtain the consent of the Advocate General.

“It is to be noted that the contemnor admitted having made all the charged statements. It does not require a forensic mind to conclude that they are ex-facie scandalous. They denigrate and deride the institution of judiciary,” the judges wrote in their order.

The contemnor (Shankar) would be well within his rights to highlight specific instances of corruption, the judges said, which should of course, be backed by materials as he cannot “tar the entire institution with a single brush.”

“That would be crossing the lakshman rekha by a long shot. It is not as if the said remark accidently tumbled out of his mouth. It was not a slip of the tongue. As the contemnor himself asserted, he has been in the field for almost 13 years. He knows what it means to utter a particular remark. That he really meant what he said is borne out by the fact that in his subsequent interviews also he maintained the very same stand,” the judges wrote in the order.

The judges said they would have closed the proceedings if the contemnor had realized his mistake and sincerely apologized. But far from doing so, the judges said, the contemnor stuck to his position, they said.

“Justice V R Krishna Iyer stated that Justice fails when Judges quail. We do not propose to quail. There are occasions when Judges have to be firm and stern. Shrugging off such provocations by stating that we possess broad shoulders would be seen as a sign of weakness. The contemnor has shown himself to be an unrepentant character,” they said.