India’s apex court has made it clear that sedition or defamation cases cannot be slapped on anyone just for criticising the government, The Hindu reported on Tuesday.
“Someone making a statement to criticise the government does not invoke an offence under sedition or defamation law. We have made it clear that invoking of section 124(A) of IPC (sedition) requires certain guidelines to be followed as per the earlier judgement of the apex court,” an Indian Supreme Court bench said on Monday, while disposing of a petition filed by a non-governmental organisation alleging misuse of the sedition law, .
Amnesty had hosted an event on India-held Kashmir (IHK), where someone allegedly chanted slogans for the freedom of Kashmir, whereas Ramya had disagreed with Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s description of Pakistan as “hell” saying: “I respectfully disagree, but Pakistan is not hell.”
Earlier, sedition cases against Bollywood superstar Amir Khan and several Kashmiri students also made headlines in international media.
The court’s observation came as advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for an NGO, said sedition was a serious offence and the law on it was being grossly misused for stifling dissent, The Hindu said.
The bench referred to a decades-old case and said, “We don’t have to explain the sedition law. It’s already there in the five-judge constitution bench judgment in Kedar Nath Singh vs state of Bihar of 1962.”
“You have to file separate plea highlighting if any misuse of sedition law is there. In criminal jurisprudence, allegations and cognisance have to be case specific, otherwise, it will go haywire. There can’t be any generalisation,” the newspaper quoted the bench as saying.
The NGO’s plea said, “there has been an increase in the number of cases of sedition against intellectuals, activists, students, with the latest being the sedition charge on Amnesty India for organising a debate on Kashmir.”
The plea said 47 cases of sedition were filed in 2014 alone and 58 persons arrested in connection with these cases, but the government has managed only one conviction so far.
According to the report, the NGO cited a series of recent examples of activists being slapped with sedition charges, including Arundhati Roy in 2010 for alleged anti-state remarks at an event in Kashmir, cartoonist Aseem Trivedi in 2012 for allegedly insulting the country through his cartoons, doctor and human rights activist Binayak Sen, JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar and DU professor S.A.R. Geelani.
