News Analysis India

Tag: Sedition

  • Vinod Dua sedition case: SC verdict relief for others facing similiar charges

    By Express News Service
    NEW DELHI: With the Supreme Court quashing the FIR on sedition and other charges against senior journalist Vinod Dua, many journalists who have been at the wrong end of this law can expect relief on similar grounds.

    According to legal experts, Thursday’s ruling will come as a relief for journalists facing sedition cases. Interestingly, another bench of the Supreme Court has already issued a notice on a set of other petitions to examine the interpretation of the sedition law, particularly in the light of media rights and freedom of speech.

    “Today’s judgement will be a precedent for other pending cases. Moreover, the court in previous cases had decided to examine the law which will directly impact the ongoing cases. It will be interesting to see if the court examines the law clause by clause so that enough checks and balances will be in place and its misuse can be minimised,” said Supreme Court advocate Ashish Singh.

    Section 124A of the IPC describes sedition as punishable with imprisonment from three years to a lifetime, a fine, or both. Uttar Pradesh has filed over 22 sedition cases in the wake of a sexual assault in Hathras last year. Among them is Kerala-based scribe Siddique Kappan.

    According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), conviction rate in sedition cases was 3.3 per cent in 2019. Earlier this year, such cases were filed against journalists Mrinal Pande, Rajdeep Sardesai, Vinod Jose, Zafar Agha, Paresh Nath and Anant Nath for sedition, among other charges, after the farmers’ tractor rally in Delhi on Republic Day. The top court has stayed the arrest of all of them.

    Two journalists from Manipur were slapped with NSA and sedition charges. In 2018, Law Commission of India stated that for expressing a thought not in consonance with the government’s policy a person should not be charged under sedition.

  • Sedition law under Supreme Court lens

    By Express News Service
    NEW DELHI:  Amid rising instances of state governments slapping charges of sedition against dissenting individuals, the Supreme Court on Friday sought response from the Centre on a plea challenging the Constitutional validity of the law. 

    A bench of justices U U Lalit, Indira Banerjee and K M Joseph was hearing a plea challenging section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, which penalises sedition. The plea, filed by journalists Kishorechandra Wangkhemcha and Kanhaiya Lal Shukla working in Manipur and Chhattisgarh, respectively has urged the top court to declare Section 124-A as unconstitutional. 

    The SC will give a detailed hearing in July. This comes months after a similar plea was dismissed by the court. The petition claimed that section 124-A infringes the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression, guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. FIRs were registered against them under Section 124A for comments and cartoons shared by them on Facebook.

    There is frequent misuse, misapplication and abuse of Section 124-A since 1962, the petition said, adding that the abuse of a law, in itself, may not bear on the validity of the law but clearly points to the vagueness and uncertainty of the current law.

    The petition also argued that the vagueness of Section 124-A exerts an unacceptable chilling effect on the democratic freedoms of individuals who cannot enjoy their legitimate democratic rights and freedoms for fear of life imprisonment.

  • SC seeks response from Centre on plea challenging sedition law

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Friday sought response from the Centre on a plea challenging the Constitutional validity of sedition law.

    A bench Justice U U Lalit, Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice K M Joseph were hearing a plea challenging section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, which penalises the crime of sedition.

    The plea, filed by two journalists – Kishorechandra Wangkhemcha and Kanhaiya Lal Shukla – working in Manipur and Chhattisgarh respectively, have urged the court to declare Section 124-A as unconstitutional.

    The petition claimed that section 124-A infringes the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression, guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

    The petitioners claimed that they have been raising questions against their respective state governments and central government, and have been charged with sedition under section 124A of IPC in various FIRs for comments and cartoons shared by them on the social networking website Facebook.

    There is frequent phenomenon of misuse, misapplication and abuse of Section 124-A since 1962, the petition said, adding that the abuse of a law, in itself, may not bear on the validity of the law but clearly points to the vagueness and uncertainty of the current law.

    The sections of sedition have been repealed in comparative post-colonial democratic jurisdictions around the world.

    While India calls itself a ‘democracy’, throughout the democratic world the offence of sedition has been condemned as undemocratic, undesirable and unnecessary, it said.

    The petition also argued that the vagueness of Section 124-A exerts an unacceptable chilling effect on the democratic freedoms of individuals who cannot enjoy there legitimate democratic rights and freedoms for fear of life imprisonment.

    While citing the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the validity of the law in 1962 in the case of Kedar Nath Singh v.

    State of Bihar, the petitioner said that the court may have been correct in its finding nearly sixty decades ago, but the law no longer passes constitutional muster today.

  • Assam writer slapped with sedition over post on Chhatisgarh encounter

    By PTI
    GUWAHATI: Assam writer Sikha Sarma was arrested on the charge of sedition and sent to judicial custody on Wednesday for her alleged comment in the social media on security personnel massacred by Maoists in Chhatisgarh, police said.

    Sarma had on April 5, two days after the brutal killing of the security personnel, allegedly posted on Facebook “Salaried people cannot be termed martyrs if they die during duty. In that case, an electricity department employee will also be a martyr if he dies due to electrocution. Media do not make the people emotional,” The post had stirred controversy with over 11,000 comments and at least 1,600 shares in Facebook.

    The police registered a case against Sarma under Sections 124A (sedition), 294A (keeping lottery office), 500 (defamation) and 506 (criminal intimidation) along with Section 45 (residuary penalty) of IT Act after receiving complaints from two BJP workers on Monday.

    “She was arrested last night and today we produced her before the Kamrup (Metro) district court. We did not seek police custody. She has been sent to 14 days of judicial custody,” Guwahati Police Commissioner Munna Prasad Gupta told PTI.

    On April 3, suspected Maoists killed 22 security personnel from different forces and wounded 31 others in an ambush in Chhattisgarh.

    Out of them, two CRPF personnel – Inspector Dilip Kumar Das and Constable Babul Rabha who were killed hailed from Assam which had led to public outpouring of grief in the state.

    Earlier, Sarma had faced rape threats on social media over her regular posts against the ruling BJP in the state.

    She had filed a complaint to the police on it and no action has been taken against anyone.

    In 2017, the defence and home ministries had told the Central Information Commission in response to an RTI query that there was no term as “martyr” or “shaheed” in the Army or police and instead a soldier or a policeman killed in action was called a “battle casualty” or “operations casualty” respectively.