(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The court upheld the verdict but reduced the sentence to four weeks.
Trivandrum: The Supreme Court on Friday sentenced senior Communist Party of India - Marxist leader M V Jayarajan to four weeks in jail for committing contempt of court by calling two Kerala high court judges who banned wayside meetings in the state ‘idiot’.
An apex court bench headed by Justice Vikramjit Sen passed the order on an appeal filed by Jayarajan a former legislator against the state high court verdict sentencing him to six months’ imprisonment.
The court upheld the verdict but reduced the sentence to four weeks. Jayarajan has also been asked to pay a fine of Rs2000.
The court rejected Jayarajan’s plea for time to surrender following the verdict. The bench has also cancelled the bail granted to him. Police officials in the state capital said they would arrest him after they receive the Supreme Court order. Jayarajan currently a member of the CPM state committee said he would accept the verdict. However he claimed that he was innocent. He said he had tried to prove his innocence in the apex court through his advocates but the court had not accepted his arguments.
While considering his petition last week the bench had severely criticised Jayarajan. The court observed that his remarks were contemptuous and amounted to an open call to the people to disobey the court.
The judges noted that the CPM leader had never tried to withdraw his remarks or express regrets for committing the contempt during the course of the trial.
Jayarajan is the first political leader to be sent to jail in a contempt of court case. He has already spent a week in the prison in connection with the case. He was released on bail after his appeal was accepted by the apex court. The high court had suo motu initiated the case against Jayarajan after he made the remarks against the two judges at a public meeting in Kannur on July 1 2010.
A division bench of the high court had held that by making the offending speech the CPM leader had ridiculed the high court judges by making “scurrilous offensive vicious and malicious onslaught on the higher judiciary. The court noted that the terminologies used by him to describe judges were intended to ‘humiliate scandalise and lower the authority’ of the court in the eyes of public and also to interfere with the administration of justice.
Jayarajan had said the criticism against the judgment banning roadside meetings was made with ‘honest intention and bona fide purpose’ and he was only expressing his opinion in respect of the judgment in public.
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