The Supreme Court (SC) has rejected as incomplete former senior counsel R K Anand’s apology given in response to a show-cause notice in contempt of court proceedings over NDTV’s BMW hit-and-run case sting operation.

The notice had been issued to Anand seeking a reply as to why a punishment involving imprisonment should not be imposed on him for having caused a “miscarriage of justice”, the Hindustan Times reported.

A bench consisting of justices Sudershan B Reddy, GS Singhvi and Aftab Alam rejected Anand’s affidavit, in which he apologised for the acts that he stated had been “imputed” to him in the telecast, and ordered him to file another affidavit.

The court expressed unhappiness over Anand not accepting fault or guilt contrary to SC’s earlier verdict that had upheld his conviction in the contempt case and ordered for filing of an additional affidavit. The bench said: “Perhaps the deponent [Anand] doesn’t accept that he had done the act. He only says ‘for all the acts imputed to him in the telecast.’ For you it’s still only an imputation.”

Appearing for Anand, senior advocate MR Culla argued: “You [the bench] dictate to me. What is wrong in this affidavit? A to Z it’s an unconditional apology.”

Anand, who is a leading criminal lawyer, had been caught on camera trying to manipulating a key witness of the famous BMW hit-and-run case in a bid to protect his client Sanjeev Nanda in 2007.

A year after Anand was convicted by the Delhi High Court in 2008 he was stripped of his senior counsel designation by the court.

Luthra & Luthra had defended client NDTV in 2009 after the channel was dragged to court on charges of attempting to conduct “a media trial”.

Photo by: WillVision Photography