New Delhi: Days after Aligarh Muslim University student Sharjeel Usmani was charged with ‘promoting enmity between different groups’ in an FIR filed in Pune, another FIR has been registered against Usmani in Lucknow, this time including charges of sedition.
The Lucknow FIR, according to the Indian Express, too is against Usmani’s speech at the Elgar Parishad event of 2021 and based on the complaint of one Anuraj Singh, who says he saw the speech online. According to Singh, Usmani is propagating hate against the Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh.
The Lucknow FIR has been registered under IPC sections 124 A (sedition), 153 A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295 A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 298 (uttering words with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings) along with sections of the IT Act.
On Tuesday, an FIR had been filed against Usmani in Pune, after opposition BJP in Maharashtra had accused him of hurting religious sentiments and a BJP member, Pradip Gavade, filed a police complaint. Sedition charges were not a part of this FIR.
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While the case may have been filed after the BJP went after Usmani’s speech, the state government too appears invested in the case against Usmani. Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh said on Wednesday that Usmani will be arrested “no matter where he is”.
Deshmukh, in a tweet, said, “Police have investigated the video clippings of the Elgar event held on 30th in Pune & a case has been registered against Sharjeel Usmani for his offensive remarks. He is not currently in MH (Maharashtra) but we will arrest him from whichever state he is in be it Bihar, UP, Gujarat or elsewhere.”
The UP Police FIR includes sedition charges even though the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that sedition is constituted by written or spoken words which “have the effect of bringing contempt or dissatisfaction or the idea of subverting government by violent means”. In Kedar Nath Singh v State of Bihar, the apex court said that if comments, however strongly worded, do not have the tendency to incite violence, cannot be treated as sedition.
The court also ruled in Balwant Singh v State of Punjab that raising pro-Khalistan slogans cannot amount to sedition as it evoked no response from the other members of the community.
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The Twenty First Law Commission, in a working paper, also noted that criticising the government does not amount to sedition and that “people have a right to express dissent and criticise the government”. It said a higher threshold should be set to prosecute people for sedition law. “Sedition as an act of trying to destabilise the government should only be invoked in cases where there is a real threat or actual use of violent means to overthrow the democratically elected government,” the report said.
(With PTI inputs)