The Supreme Court on Wednesday initiated hearing on a contempt of court application filed against the Kantipur daily. A case was registered at the apex court on Tuesday claiming that a news report on senior most SC Justice Gopal Parajuli’s certificate archive had defamed the court.

Advocate Santosh Bhandari had filed a lawsuit in the court stating that the news report published in the national daily defamed the court and the justice, who is now the acting chief justice. Bhandari filed the application a day after Chief Justice Sushila Karki was suspended due to a motion of impeachment filed against her in Parliament.

Though a single bench of Justice Sharada Prasad Ghimire was assigned to hear the case on Wednesday, it was postponed citing time limits.

The applicant argues that the report published in the newspaper on April 24 claiming that the archive of the senior most justice’s certificate was not found to have been maintained by the concerned government bodies had negative consequences. The lawsuit claims that the “misleading” report attacked the spirit of judiciary. It further argued that the newspaper’s failure to give due space to the defence of the Judicial Council that the certificates were safe in archive “dealt a serious blow to the court’s impartiality”.

Chairman and Managing Director of Kantipur Publica-tions Kailash Sirohiya, Director Swastika Sirohiya and Kantipur daily’s Editor-in-Chief Sudheer Sharma and journalist Krishna Gyawali have been made defendants in the case. In 2014, two contempt of court cases were filed against the daily for carrying news reports on justice appointment. Advocate duo Anjani Kumar Pokhrel and Ratna Kumari Shrestha had filed contempt cases against Kantipur claiming that the news reports on the parliamentary hearings of some of the incumbent senior justices and the verdicts and orders issued in certain court cases slandered the court.

On February 2, a division bench of Justices Bishwombar Prasad Shrestha and Sapana Pradhan Malla quashed the two cases against the Kantipur Publications and the Kantipur daily, stating that the news reports and editorial related to appointment of justices, parliamentary hearings and Lokman Singh Karki, former chief of the CIAA, published in the daily did not commit contempt of court.