The Supreme Court will pronounce on Monday the quantum of punishment in the contempt of court case against advocate Prashant Bhushan, for his tweets on the judiciary. The judgment is expected at around 10.30 am. The court had reserved its verdict on August 25th, after a heated argument at the end of which, Bhushan refused to apologise.

A bench of Justices Arun Mishra, B R Gavai and Krishna Murari will deliver the ruling. In its last hearing, the Court had said that it was “painful” to read the justifications of Bhushan in connection with the case.

“This is not the way a senior lawyer like Bhushan over 30 years of experience should behave,” Justice Arun Mishra observed. While the court had said that apology is a magical word that can heal a lot many things, Bhushan had said that apology would mean “contempt of his conscience.”

Rajeev Dhawan who represents Bhushan in the case had requested the court, to not “make Bhushan a martyr” and had asked it to let him go with a warning. Attorney General KK Venugopal had also agreed to Dhavan’s request.

Ahead of the verdict, 122 law students wrote to Supreme Court asking it to reconsider the judgment. More than 3,000 members of civil society including former judges, retired bureaucrats, journalists and lawyers had also criticised the Supreme Court’s judgment.

Bhushan was held guilty of contempt of court on August 14. The case is related to two tweets posted by Bhushan on June 27 and 29. While the first one talked about an undeclared emergency and the role of the Supreme Court. The second was regarding Chief Justice SA Bobde who tried a Harley Davidson superbike in his hometown Nagpur, during the coronavirus outbreak.