Today, Delhi High Court has directed Vivek Agnihotri to be present on 10th April in the Court. Back in 2018, Agnihotri allegedly made allegations of bias in a tweet against the former judge of the High Court and present Chief Justice of Orissa High Court, Justice Muralidhar, in respect of the judge's order quashing the order of house arrest and transit remand of activist Gautam Navlakha in the Bhima Koregaon case.

The Division bench was headed by a division bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul and Justice Talwant Singh.

Last year, in Dec 2018, Agnihotri submitted an “unconditional apology” before the court for his remarks after which the court asked him to remain present to “show remorse in person.” 

The Counsel member of the accused informed that the filmmaker has already tendered an unconditional apology but could not be present in court due to high fever. 

In its reply, the Court said - “What does the previous order say? When is he going to be here? Tell us, we'll have it then,” 

“We're not asking. We have directed you (to remain present). There's no question.”

In September 2022, the court had directed to proceed ex parte against Swarajya news portal, Anand Ranganathan and others who did not appear in the matter. The proceedings were initiated after Senior Advocate Rajshekhar Rao wrote a letter to the court stating that the tweet was a deliberate attempt to attack a sitting high court judge.

Previously, Agnihotri had told the court that he has taken down the tweet in question. However, amicus curiae Senior Advocate Arvind Nigam informed the court that Twitter in its response has said that the tweets were taken down by the microblogging platform.

“He is granted an exemption for today on the ground that he is indisposed. He undertakes to appear on the next date,” the court said while adjourning the matter.