A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice A S Anand, in whose court the incident happened, while passing the order, said, "law does not give a lawyer licence to permit himself the liberty to cause disrespect or lower the dignity of the court. A lawyer does not enjoy any special immunity when he has committed gross contempt of court.

Balwani raised slogans against the Supreme Court and threw shoes towards the judges in the Chief Justice's court barely 15 minutes after the court assembled on Friday morning and was immediately taken into custody.

The bench awarded four months' simple imprisonment to Nandlal Balwani, who claimed to be an advocate enrolled with the Bombay Bar Association, and imposed a fine of Rs 2,000. Further, it said in default of the payment of the fine, the contemnerwould undergo additional imprisonment of two months.

Balwani, in his defence, tendered unqualified apology for "his intemperate behaviour" and said he has suffered a lot "at the hands of all police agencies" while pleading that "I had no intention to cause any disrespect or lower the dignity of the court".

Rejecting his apology the bench said, "the contemnor's action was aimed at intimidating the court and causing interference in the judicial proceedings."

The bench said, "No court can permit itself to be intimidated in this manner. The apology tendered by contemner at this stage does not appear to be bonafide and it seems to have been tendered to escape punishment. We do not accept the apology." Rejecting the plea of the contemner that he has been suffering at the hands of the "police agencies since 1979-80" and that his fundamental rights had been violated, the bench said, "this is no way (throwing shoes) to ventilate grievance against police. As a lawyer he should have known better."

"It is mostunbefitting of a lawyer to act in a manner in which the contemner has acted," the bench observed and added, "keeping in view the seriousness of the offence committed by the contemner and the intemperate and objectionable language used by him, it is necessary to impose deterrent punishment."

President of Supreme Court Bar Association R K Jain, president of Supreme Court Advocates-On-Record Association P H Parekh and additional solicitor general condemned the behaviour of the contemner and termed the incident as "most unfortunate".

The court pronounced the sentence in a jam-packed courtroom where most of the advocates present condemned the incident.