Akshara Yadav & Sharanya Gupta*
In the span of nine months, the Supreme Court of India has twice watched its own Chief Justice become the target of conduct that, on a plain reading of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, falls within the definition of contempt of the court.
On October 6, 2025, advocate Rakesh Kishore removed his shoe in Court No. 1 and tried to throw it at Chief Justice B.R. Gavai, shouting that Sanatan Dharma would not be insulted. Security stopped him before it landed, and the Attorney General gave his consent to prosecute.
Nine months later, on July 10, 2026, litigant-in-person Prabal Pratap called himself “the sovereign”, addressed the bench as “judicial servant”, and, after his petition was dismissed, hurled a bundle of papers at the judges and abused Chief Justice Surya Kant before being escorted out. In both cases, the option to prosecute was there. In both, the Court chose not to.
This is not about whether the Court should have acted. Contempt jurisdiction under Article 129 is discretionary, and no rule of law required either bench to prosecute. The bigger question is what it means that the Court, twice in nine months, chose silence over its own process, without a reasoned order explaining why direct attacks on a sitting judge fall outside the scope of criminal contempt.
The Legal Framework
Article 129 makes the Supreme Court a court of record with power to punish for its own contempt; Article 215 gives High Courts the same power. Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 defines criminal contempt through three types: (i) conduct that scandalises the court or lowers its authority, (ii) conduct that prejudices judicial proceedings, and (iii) conduct that obstructs the administration of justice. Section 12 caps punishment at six months of imprisonment or a fine of ₹2,000. Section 13, amended in 2006, allows truth as a defence where it serves the public interest and is raised in good faith. None of this defends a shoe thrown at a judge or abuse hurled at him mid-hearing. There is no truth defence for that, and no public interest defence either. It is conduct, not commentary.
Previous Precedents of the Court
Indian courts have rarely punished heavily, but it has almost always reasoned through the question and reached a finding. In the Brahma Prakash Sharma case, the Court held that contempt protects public confidence in the administration of justice, not a judge’s personal feelings. In the Bathina Ramakrishna Reddy case, the Court rooted the doctrine in Willmot C.J.’s old warning that attacks on judges shake public allegiance to law itself, because judges are protected not as individuals but as the channel through which justice reaches people.
Namboodiripad v. Nambiar case, the Kerala Chief Minister was fined a token ₹50 for calling the judiciary an instrument of class rule, but the finding of contempt was not skipped; only the punishment was light. In Re: Arundhati Roy case, the author was convicted with a day of symbolic imprisonment and a fine, explicitly stating that the point was public confidence, not a judge’s ego. In Re: Prashant Bhushan, the advocate was fined one rupee, but only after testing his tweets against Section 2(c) and rejecting his defences under Section 13. Moreover, even in cases where the court held that there was no contempt of court at all, as in the case of P.N. Duda v. P. Shiv Shankar, which added one of the field’s most quoted lines: judges must not be hypersensitive even where criticism oversteps its limits, indicating that the court has always given a reasoned reply.
Whether the punishment was ₹1 or three months in default, there was always a finding. As Lord Denning put it, “when things are ill done, silence is not an option.” The point was never to stop criticism. It was to keep criticism answerable to something.
How are the Recent Cases Different?
Neither order argued that the conduct fell short of Section 2(c). Both simply declined to engage the question. When SCBA President Vikas Singh pressed for a hearing on the contempt plea against Kishore, noting the Attorney General’s consent was already in hand, Justice Kant reminded the courtroom that “our religion never endorses violence” and that the Court “should not glorify such behaviour.” Justice Bagchi framed continued attention as counterproductive: “The Chief Justice has shown magnanimity… Algorithms are designed to thrive on hate, anger, and caste. The more we talk about this, the more it gets monetised. Let it die a natural death.” CJI Gavai said much the same, and the plea was adjourned rather than decided.
Lord Templeman, once a senior sitting judge in England’s House of Lords, saw no reason to pursue contempt against a tabloid that captioned his photograph ‘OLD FOOLS’, since English judges “did not take notice of personal insults, uttered without malice.” But if the paper had called the bench dishonest, he said, “I would have promptly hauled them up.” That is a defensible line: tolerate the insult, take an action on an attack on integrity. It is hard to locate in either order. A bench explaining restraint through algorithms and sympathy, rather than Section 2(c), is not narrowing the law. It is declining to apply it.
The NCERT Contradiction
This gap is harder to explain next to how sensitive the judiciary has been about its image elsewhere. In early 2026, a Class 8 NCERT chapter discussing corruption within the judiciary triggered a suo motu Supreme Court ban on further publication, with NCERT made to apologise and rewrite the chapter under judicial direction. Set that against the two physical incidents of contempt that produced no action at all. If debatable criticism in a schoolbook is serious enough for a ban, but a shoe thrown at the Chief Justice is serious enough only for a quiet decision to move on, the standard is not consistent. The institution defends its sanctity aggressively against words on a page, and not against physical disrespect in its own courtroom.
Is This a Philosophy, Or Just Improvisation
There is a real case for restraint. A judiciary that refuses to be provoked earns a form of authority that punishment cannot buy, and in an environment where every courtroom disruption is filmed within seconds, prosecuting a fringe actor risks making them a cause. England and Wales abolished the common-law offence of scandalising the court through the Crime and Courts Act, 2013, on the view that criticism of judges is better met with debate than prosecution.
But restraint that is not stated as policy is not restraint. It is discretion without a rule, and discretion without a rule is unpredictability. Jurist Nariman described Indian contempt jurisprudence as “no more, no less than ‘Dog-Law.’ There are no rules, no constraints”, echoing Bentham’s image of a judge who waits until the dog misbehaves, then beats it, and calls that lawmaking. That charge was aimed at unpredictable punishment, but it applies just as well to unpredictable mercy. If courtroom disruption sometimes draws a contempt notice and sometimes does not, depending on which bench is sitting, litigants and lawyers lose any way of knowing where the line sits. And if the Court signals that direct disruption of its own Chief Justice doesn’t warrant action, subordinate courts, with far less insulation, may wonder if they are expected to extend the same magnanimity.
Call for Action
None of this means Kishore or Pratap deserved six months in prison. Namboodiripad got ₹50. Arundhati Roy got a symbolic day. Prashant Bhushan got one rupee. Indian contempt law has never been about harsh punishment. It has been about the Court stating, on the record, where the line sits and why. That is what is missing now. Jurist Nariman argued the power to punish for scandalising the court should never rest with one judge or a two-judge bench, but with at least five, “because when the Judges speak in a contempt case they speak for the Court.” The same logic applies to the decision not to speak. If the Court has decided criminal contempt should no longer answer direct courtroom attacks, that is defensible, but it needs to be argued the way Bathina Ramakrishna Reddy, Namboodiripad, Roy, and Prashant Bhushan were argued, tested against Section 2(c) and 13. An institution that has spent seventy years explaining why an insult does or does not amount to contempt owes that same explanation when it decides an insult does not require an answer at all.
* The authors are third-year Law students at Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur. The authors may be contacted at aksharayadav@nlunagpur.ac.in & sharanyagupta@nlunagpur.ac.in, respectively.
This blog reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Policy Chronicle.
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