"Indian judiciary is considered by the citizens in the country with the highest esteem. The judiciary is considered as a last hope when a citizen fails to get justice anywhere. The Supreme Court is the epitome of the Indian judiciary."
These were the words of a Supreme Court bench of Justices Arun Mishra, BR Gavai and Krishna Murari in a judgment in 2020. These words needs no elaborate explanation, but for the unacquainted, in simple terms: The Indian judiciary is a really big deal, and the Supreme Court bigger still.
Naturally, for an institution that embodies hope and justice and all things great, a few lines of criticism should be like well cooked spaghetti on a wall (ie not stick). And yet in this same judgment, in which they had waxed eloquent about the esteem of the Indian judiciary, the Supreme Court held Advocate Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt of court for his tweets criticising the then Chief Justice of India and India's top court.
Even though Bhushan, on refusing to apologise for his remarks, was only fined a rupee, the judgment by itself went on to set an extremely problematic precedent in which archaic notions about "scandalising the court" which are no longer even applicable in English law (where they are believed to have historically originated) were given precedence over a citizen's fundamental right to free speech.