Savarkar row: No AG nod to contempt case against Owaisi

NEW DELHI: Attorney General K K Venugopal has declined to give his consent for initiation of criminal contempt proceedings against AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi for his remarks that an inquiry commission had observed V D Savarkar was complicit in Mahatma Gandhi’s murder.
A thinktank had written to the AG seeking his consent to initiate contempt proceedings against Owaisi for his remarks. Venugopal said it is true that the judgment of the top court also notes the fact that Savarkar has been found not guilty of Gandhiji’s murder in the criminal trial. However, if one reads the judgment as a whole, it is clear that the court was disinclined to go into the findings of the Justice Kapoor Commission of Inquiry, the AG said.
“I may also point out that Justice Kapoor has retired as a judge of the Supreme Court in the year 1962, and hence was a retired judge when he was appointed as Commission of Inquiry in 1966. The statement made by Owaisi is relatable, therefore, to the finding of Justice Kapoor Commission and not the Supreme Court.
"It would therefore be difficult to hold that he has committed contempt of the Supreme Court by suggesting and/or implying that a sitting judge of the Supreme Court had held that Savarkar was complicit in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, which is completely contrary to factual reality,” the AG in his reply dated October 26 said.
In a letter to Owaisi, the Abhinav Bharat Congress and its founder Pankaj Phadnis had referred to a Supreme Court judgment dated March 28, 2018, which stated, “The submission of the petitioner that Shri Savarkar has been held guilty for the murder of Gandhiji is misplaced”. “After this categorical assertion by the highest court of the country, where is the scope to suggest that Savarkar ‘murdered’ Gandhi ji, as you are reported to have said?” the thinktank had said in its letter to Owaisi.