The Delhi High Court on Thursday discharged Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue S Gurumurthy in a criminal contempt of court case against him for his tweets about Chief Justice of Orissa High Court S Muralidhar.

A division bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Gaurang Kanth discharged Gurumurthy noting that he has filed a written apology as well as appeared in person to express remorse.

The Delhi High Court had taken cognisance of the matter after Gurumurthy posted the tweets about a March 2018 judgement by Justices S Muralidhar and IS Mehta. The judges had granted interim relief to former Union Minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram in the INX media case. In his tweet, which has since been deleted, Gurumurthy, the editor of Tughlak magazine, had asked if Muralidhar had been a junior to P Chidambaram, who is also a senior lawyer.

Muralidhar, who was then a Delhi High Court judge, called for a meeting of the counsels of both parties in the INX media case and clarified that he was a was a junior only to former Attorney General G Ramaswamy and not to P Chidambaram.

Tushar Mehta, who was then the additional solicitor general, had advised Muralidhar to ignore the tweets, saying that the judiciary would not be able to function if took cognisance of every offensive post on social media.

Muralidhar did not initiate contempt but said that it was for Mehta and the bar to consider if the tweet demanded action, reported Bar and Bench. This prompted the Delhi High Court Bar Association to file a criminal contempt petition against Gurumurthy.

On Thursday, the court noted that the matter has been pending for five years and that it should be put to an end.

Senior Advocate Rakesh Tiku, appearing for the Bar Association, told the court that Gurumurthy’s reply expressing apology can be cited to close the case.

“We accept Mr Gurumurthy’s apology and expression of deep remorse for the subject incident and consider it appropriate to discharge the show cause issued to him in the present contempt petition,” the court ordered.

During earlier hearings, Mridul had said that that dignity of the judges are not dependent on criticism, be it fair or not.

“Sometimes the cure is worse that the disease,” he added. “Unnecessarily dragging an honorable judge’s the name into all this controversy, reported all the time. Whatever for? Surely, you don’t think we rely on newspaper report and tweet for our dignity? Our dignity rests on surer footing.”