SC to hear contempt plea against Kanhaiya, Gilani on Monday

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear on Monday a plea seeking contempt action against jailed Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, former DU lecturer SAR Gilani and few others on the ground that they allegedly termed the execution of Afzal Guru as “judicial killing”.

A bench of Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices R Banumathi and U U Lalit fixed the contempt plea for hearing on Monday when the plea alleged that by terming the execution as “judicial killing”, Kumar and others have committed contempt of the court which had delivered the verdict.

The plea, filed by lawyer Vineet Dhanda, refers to the apex court verdict, pronounced on August 4, 2005 in the case, by which Guru was handed down death penalty for being part of the conspiracy in the attack on Parliament.

“The so-called cultural event’s pamphlets spoke about the judicial killing of Afzal Guru. The main topic of the ‘cultural event’ organised was judicial killing of Afzal Guru which outright tantamount to criminal contempt as the respondents are calling the judges of the apex court as killers who have been projected to have committed judicial killing of Afzal Guru,” the plea said.

“Afzal and Yakub Memon were no martyrs as projected by the group of students of JNU. The Supreme Court has already passed a detailed judgment in both cases after giving due consideration as per law after going through the evidence,” it further said.

Pamphlets were allegedly distributed during the “so-called” cultural event held at JNU on February 9 that termed death sentence to Guru and Maqbool Bhatt as “judicial killing”, the plea said.

The students, who organised the event, also used social media platforms and “tarnished” the image of Supreme Court, it alleged.

Besides Kanhaiya and Gilani, the plea has sought contempt action against Umar Khalid, Lenin Kumar, Anirban Bhattacharya, Shehla Rashid Shora and Ali Javed.