The Supreme Court on Friday suspended a six-month sentence imposed by the Madras High Court on YouTuber Savukku Shankar for contempt of court, Live Law reported.
While suspending the sentence, a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and JK Maheshwari asked him to not make any videos or comments about the proceedings before the High Court.
On September 15, Shankar, a former employee of the Tamil Nadu Vigilance department, was held guilty of criminal contempt for claiming on YouTube channel Redpix that “the entire judiciary is riddled with corruption”.
During the hearing, Shankar refused to revoke his statement and told the High Court that he stands by what he has said.
This was the second contempt proceedings against the YouTuber.
On July 22, the High Court had initiated the first criminal proceedings after observing that Shankar, in one of his tweets, had implied that Justice GR Swaminathan had “met someone”, allegedly to get a favourable verdict in a case against YouTuber Maridhas.
In December, the Madras High Court had quashed a first information report filed against Maridhas for a tweet on the helicopter crash in which former Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, his wife Madhulika Rawat and 11 others were killed.
Maridhas had claimed that Tamil Nadu was “turning into another Kashmir under DMK [Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam] rule”. He had also claimed that it was possible “for any kind of plot to be hatched here [in Tamil Nadu]”.
Bipin Rawat’s chopper had crashed in Tamil Nadu.
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