Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul on Sunday said there was a growing intolerance against the judiciary fuelled by the social media.
He said imputations are being made against judges for their decisions during an online lecture, according to a report in The Hindu.
He also warned that damage will be done to the judicial institution if the tendency to criticize crossed certain lines.
He was giving an online lecture on ‘Freedom of Speech in times of COVID-19 – Fake news and misinformation’ organized by the MBA Academy, Madras Bar Association.
The event witnessed participation of S Parthasarathy, chairman of the MBA Academy, and M Baskar, secretary of the Madras Bar Association.
Justice Kaul was part of the Bench which recently took suo motu cognizance of the migrant workers’ crisis.
The judge said it was a struggle to regulate social media without restricting free speech.
He was quoted as saying ‘fake news propensity has aggravated, creating hostility against identifiable groups’ even before the onset of the pandemic in the country.
He said there was a lot of information available during COVID-19 crisis, including its ‘remedies’, the origin, people who were ‘helping the spread of the virus’ and the likes.
These messages even take on religious and racial undertones, he said.