Nobody in this country—in all humility I beg to say, except me—came forward in the open and demanded the registration of an FIR in the face of crores of rupees going up in flames at the residence of Justice Verma in Delhi. Nobody.
There was no Prashant Bhushan, no Kapil Sibal, no Indira Jaising. Nobody.
Yet you can see so many people came out—even without a veil—in support of Justice Verma: Kapil Sibal and many others. Why?
The question is, as the people in Delhi know, the money that was burned was not the money of Justice Verma. It belonged to some other judge—somebody far more important and powerful than him. That is the reason why nobody spoke. Everybody tried to protect him.
The Delhi High Court Bar Association did not utter a word. The Supreme Court Bar Association did not say a word. We see these bar associations—you know, the Supreme Court Bar Association President Vikas Singh—he filed a PIL in the Supreme Court asking for a ban on the sharing and circulation of video clips of court proceedings. Why? Why?
Why did Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi all come and lament the mention of corruption in the judiciary in a standard textbook? Why?
The whole institution has been hijacked by a few families and vested interests. All these PILs are nothing but vested interests for money, name, fame, and power.
If I say anything more, tomorrow I could be hauled up for contempt. That is how you suppress public opinion. That is how you suppress the weak and the meek. The contempt law does not apply to the powerful.
I call upon one and all to support me. Let us stand together—ordinary mortals—against the law of contempt, against the penalisation of criticism, and against contempt-of-court charges arising from scandalisation. These are obsolete concepts belonging to the Dark Ages that do not suit or align with our constitutional democracy. We have to oppose it, dump it, and see that it comes to an end.
Courts are open places. We have an open-court system. All over the world, court proceedings are live-streamed and accessible to the public at large. I am not asking for a right to record it myself. Let the court record it, live-stream it, preserve it, archive it, and make copies of the court proceedings available. That is what needs to be done, rather than initiating proceedings against me for circulating—without editing, interpolation, or tampering—a true record of what transpired in court, which I did in the exercise of my fundamental right.