“Judges Are Not Holy Cows”: Madras High Court Upholds Free Speech, Refuses Ban on ‘Karuppu’ Amid Remarks on Judicial Corruption
(By Syed Ali Taher Abedi)
Chennai, May 27, 2026 In a judgment that is simultaneously an act of judicial candour, a defence of artistic liberty, and a restatement of the constitutional principles that govern freedom of expression in India, the Madras High Court on Tuesday dismissed a writ petition seeking to ban or regulate the Tamil film Karuppu declining to treat the judiciary as an institution immune from cinematic scrutiny and acknowledging, with remarkable institutional honesty, that corruption within the judiciary is a reality that no court of conscience can deny.
A bench comprising Justice GR Swaminathan and Justice V Lakshminarayanan delivered the ruling in the matter of RS Tamilvendan v The Secretary and Others, dismissing a petition that sought to ban or regulate the Tamil movie ‘Karuppu’ on the ground that it allegedly portrayed the judiciary in a bad light.
“None can deny there is corruption in the Judiciary. There were and are corrupt Judges. While addressing a legal conference in Kollam, Kerala, former CJI Bharucha implied that 20 per cent of the Judges in this country were corrupt. The startling statement made by the Bhushans (father and son duo) is still in public memory. We would not go that far. We refuse to even endorse such sweeping statements. But we do know and have come across instances of judicial corruption. The Full Court of the Madras High Court regularly shows the exit door to such black sheep”
The judgment, written with a literary directness that has characterised many of Justice Swaminathan’s notable pronouncements, does not flinch from the institutional discomfort of its own central finding. In declining to protect the judiciary from cinematic portrayal, the court chose to speak truth about the institution it represents a choice that, in the long arc of judicial self-governance, may prove more restorative of public confidence than any act of institutional self-protection could ever have been.
The Petitioner’s Grievance: Bribery on Screen
The writ petition was filed by RS Tamilvendan, who approached the court with a complaint rooted in what he characterised as a constitutionally impermissible attack on the reputation and dignity of the judicial institution.
The petitioner submitted that in one of the scenes in the movie, a judge had been shown as being involved in bribery and consuming drugs conduct, he argued was against the Constitution and damaged the reputation of judges.
He contended that the film’s director, Balaji, had subjected the Indian judicial system to criticism that was made without application of mind and without the sensitivity that the constitutional gravity of the subject demanded.
The petitioner pressed the court not merely to decline the relief of a ban, but to initiate contempt proceedings against the filmmakers a prayer that the court addressed with equal directness and equal resolution.
What distinguishes this judgment from a routine dismissal of a censorship petition is the frankness with which the bench addressed the underlying factual premise of the film’s portrayal.
Rather than dismissing the movie’s depiction as a fabrication unworthy of judicial engagement, the court confronted it on its own institutional terms and found that the portrayal, however dramatically rendered, was not without foundation in reality.
The bench observed that none could deny there is corruption in the judiciary that there were and are corrupt judges, and that the court had come across instances of judicial corruption.
It noted that the Full Court of the Madras High Court regularly shows the exit door to such black sheep.
“Judges need not be treated as holy cows. Justice is not a cloistered virtue; she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful even though outspoken comments of ordinary men (Lord Atkin).”
This is a statement of institutional self-awareness of the highest order.
A constitutional court, sitting in judgment over a film that depicts judicial corruption, acknowledging from the Bench that such corruption exists and that the institution has mechanisms to address it and then proceeding, on the strength of that acknowledgement, to decline the very relief that would have shielded the institution from further scrutiny is a court that understands the difference between institutional dignity and institutional impunity.
The court further observed that corruption in the judiciary cannot be committed without some members of the Bar becoming privy to the corrupt and that the vigilant watch maintained by the High Court is the sustaining stream to catch the corrupt and deal with the situation appropriately.
“Corruption in Judiciary cannot be committed without some members of the Bar becoming privy to the corrupt. The vigilant watch by the High Court is the sustaining stream to catch the corrupt and to deal with the situation appropriately”
The identification of the Bar’s role in facilitating judicial corruption is a pointed observation one that connects directly to the broader national conversation about fake advocates, fraudulent credentials, and the integrity of the legal profession that has dominated India’s legal discourse in the weeks preceding this judgment.
Lord Atkin Invoked: Justice as a Public Virtue, not a Cloistered One
In a passage that will be widely quoted across India’s legal fraternity, the court invoked the immortal words of Lord Atkin one of the most celebrated jurists in the common law tradition to articulate the constitutional principle that underlies its entire reasoning.
The bench stated that judges need not be treated as holy cows, and invoked the principle that justice is not a cloistered virtue that she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men, citing Lord Atkin.
Lord Atkin’s dictum, first articulated in the landmark English case of Ambard v. Attorney General for Trinidad and Tobago 1936, has been cited by Indian courts across decades as the foundational principle for the protection of fair comment about the judiciary.
“A film is a creation of art. An artist has his own freedom to express himself in a manner which is not prohibited in law and such prohibitions are not read by implication to crucify the rights of an expressive mind… authors. express their thoughts according to the choice of their words, phrases, expressions and also create characters who may look absolutely different than an ordinary man would If intellectual prowess and natural or cultivated power of creation is interfered without the permissible facet of law, the concept of creativity paves the path of extinction; and when creativity dies, values of civilization corrode”
Its invocation in this judgment is deliberate, precise, and entirely apt. The suggestion that a film depicting judicial corruption should be banned because it brings the judiciary into disrepute is precisely the kind of institutional insecurity that Lord Atkin’s principle was designed to repudiate.
Justice that cannot withstand the scrutiny of a film however melodramatic its rendering is not justice that the public can confidently trust.
Artistic License and the Constitutional Right to Expression
Having established that the factual premise of the film is not wholly divorced from institutional reality, the bench proceeded to address the legal question of whether artistic expression depicting judicial misconduct can be regulated or suppressed under the Constitution.
While the court agreed that the system was portrayed in an exaggerated manner in the film, it noted that it was usual in Tamil cinema to portray everything melodramatically describing this as artistic license and observing that an artist is entitled to present a situation in his own way.
The court drew a distinction between a documentary or factual presentation, which could be tested on a stricter standard, and an artistic production, which is to be weighed on a different scale where the artist has greater leverage and freedom.
The legal significance of this distinction cannot be overstated. A documentary that falsely attributes corruption to a named judge would engage different legal principles both of defamation and of contempt than a fictional narrative in which characters who inhabit an imaginary court are depicted as corrupt.
The film Karuppu falls unambiguously in the latter category, and the court’s application of the artistic license principle reflects a sophisticated understanding of how creative freedom and institutional accountability must be balanced in a constitutional democracy.
The court further observed that a film is a creation of art, that an artist has his own freedom to express himself in a manner which is not prohibited in law, and that such prohibitions are not to be read by implication to crucify the rights of an expressive mind. It added that if intellectual prowess and the natural or cultivated power of creation is interfered with beyond the permissible limits of law, the concept of creativity paves the path of extinction and when creativity dies, the values of civilisation corrode.
This is a passage of considerable literary and constitutional force. The equation of creative suppression with civilisational corrosion is not hyperbole it is a distillation of the reasoning that underlies Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India, which guarantees every citizen the freedom of speech and expression as a fundamental right.
The court added that Article 19(1)(a) gives citizens the right to freedom of expression, which includes the right to express one’s opinion by words of mouth, writing, printing, picture, or in any other manner including the freedom of communication and the right to propagate or publish opinions
The CBFC Certification: An Independent Regulatory Imprimatur
The court’s reasoning was additionally reinforced by the fact that the film had already passed through the statutory gatekeeping mechanism established by Parliament for precisely this purpose.
The court noted that in the present case, the movie had been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification for public viewing, and held that when the CBFC did not view the movie as contempt of court and had granted certification, a writ petition could not substitute its opinion.
This is a point of procedural and constitutional significance. The CBFC is the statutory body entrusted by Parliament with the authority to certify films for public exhibition under the Cinematograph Act.
Its certification is not a mere administrative formality it is a considered regulatory judgment that the content of the film does not cross the legal thresholds that would warrant prohibition or modification.
For a writ court to second-guess that certification, on the basis of a petitioner’s subjective view that the judiciary has been portrayed unfairly, would be to substitute judicial sentiment for statutory regulatory authority a substitution that the court rightly declined to make.
On Contempt: An Imaginary Court, Not the Real Judiciary
The petitioner’s prayer for contempt proceedings against the filmmakers was dismissed with equal firmness and equal reasoning.
The court held that the movie makers had not scandalised or lowered the authority of an actual court observing that the makers of the movie had portrayed the judges and lawyers of an imaginary court as corrupt, and not the entire judicial system.
The contempt jurisdiction of the court is directed at conduct that scandalises or tends to scandalise the authority of actual courts conduct that undermines the administration of justice as it is actually conducted.
A film that depicts corruption in a fictional judicial setting, without identifying or targeting any actual court, actual judge, or actual proceeding, does not meet this threshold.
To extend the law of contempt to protect an imaginary institution from fictional portrayal would be to expand that jurisdiction far beyond its constitutional and statutory limits a step that the court correctly and categorically declined to take.
The Wider Significance: Institutional Courage on the Bench
The judgment in RS Tamilvendan v. The Secretary and Others will be remembered not merely for the relief it granted or the petitions it dismissed, but for the moral and institutional courage it demonstrated in the manner of its deciding.
At a moment when India’s judiciary is engaged in intense national conversation about judicial corruption, fake lawyers, professional integrity, and the accountability of institutions, a High Court bench that looks a petitioner in the eye and says yes, there is corruption in the judiciary, and no, that is not a reason to ban a film that depicts it has rendered a service to constitutional democracy that goes well beyond the resolution of a single writ petition.
The judiciary is not a holy cow.
Justice is not a cloistered virtue. These are not merely literary flourishes in a well-written judgment.
They are constitutional commitments ones that every court in India, at every level of the hierarchy, is called upon to honour each time it is asked to shield an institution from scrutiny rather than hold it to account.
Case Title: RS Tamilvendan v. The Secretary and Others | Case No: WP 20286 of 2026 | Court: Madras High Court | Bench: Justice GR Swaminathan and Justice V Lakshminarayanan | Date: May 27, 2026 | Counsel for Petitioner: Mr. M. Senthilkumar | Counsel for Respondents: Mr. M. Murali, Government Advocate; Mr. K. Srinivasamoorthy, Senior Panel Counsel for Central Government
