AG grants consent for court proceedings against cartoonist for illustrative tweets

India's top legal officer has granted consent for initiating contempt proceedings against comic artist Rachita Taneja for tweets on Supreme Court in Arnab Goswami's case.

A student of law had reportedly sought the consent of Attorney General K.K.Venugopal for initiating contempt of court against Rachita. K.K.Venugopal has stated in his letter approving the contempt that the cartooned depiction is "gross insinuation of the apex court of this country"

He said, "one of the cartoons tweeted by Twitter handle @sanitarypanels completely depicts that the Supreme Court is biased towards the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party, " Bar and Bench reported on Tuesday.

Cartoonist Rachita Taneja is the founder of Sanitary Panels, an Instagram handle which illustrates comics on topics of feminism, human rights, society, culture and social justice. It chooses topical issues to illustrate comics.

In a video shared by 'She the people', she says, that through her work she speaks her mind out and she wants to urge people to do the same. There are three tweets that were found objectionable by the Court. They are listed below:

The AG has also given consent to initiate contempt of court proceedings against comedian Kunal Kamra recently over his tweet in the wake or granting bail to Arnab Goswami by supreme Court.

Finding Kamra's tweet highly objectionable, the AG granted consent to start criminal contempt against him, he said, "I find today people believe that they can brazenly and boldly condemn supreme court of India and its judges by exercising what they believe is their freedom of speech. But under the constitution freedom of speech is subject to the law of contempt and I believe that it is the time that people understand that attacking the Supreme Court of India unjustifiably and brazenly will attract punishment under the contempt of courts Act, 1972."