oppn parties Booking Celebrities For Sedition: Where Will This Lead To?

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October 17, 2026

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  • Allahabad HC said that the UP Police is acting as law unto themselves as they detained a person unlawfully even before his arrest
  • Kolkata witnesses traffic snarls on the first day of the Durga Puja festival as revellers start pnadal-hopping
  • Neha Bora was subsequently released and Dipke is to appear before a magistrate today at noon
  • Delhi Police detained Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke, Neha Bora of AISA, student leaders and supporters ahead of a rally in Connaught Place demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar's resignation. The protest followed the detention and jailing of two CJP leaders earlier in the week over demonstrations at Jantar Mantar
  • The Reserve Bank of India is considering further monetary tightening to counter capital outflows and increase the cost of betting against the rupee, according to bankers and analysts cited by Reuters. The measures follow recent rate increases and steps to drain liquidity as pressure on the currency and inflation concerns persist
  • India directed oil marketing companies to stop diverting sugar-based feedstocks for ethanol production in the 2026–27 supply year, according to a new tender issued on Friday. The companies have invited bids for 11 billion litres of ethanol made from alternatives including corn and broken rice, amid concerns about domestic sugar supplies and prices
  • Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said India's trade imbalance with China was growing sharply and attributed the problem partly to restrictions on Indian goods and services entering the Chinese market. China subsequently said it was ready to work with India to address mutual economic and trade concerns; India's trade deficit with China reached $69 billion in the first half of FY2026–27, up 27% year-on-year
  • Indian equity benchmarks extended their recovery on Friday, with the Sensex rising 413.66 points to close at 74,729.27 and the Nifty 50 gaining 148.80 points to settle at 23,146.15. Information technology shares, including Tech Mahindra, Infosys and TCS, helped lift the indices
  • India defeated Zimbabwe by four wickets in the opening women's T20 International in Raipur, taking a 1–0 lead in the three-match series. Deepti Sharma and Niki Prasad combined in an 82-run stand after India's top order collapsed, helping the hosts chase down Zimbabwe's total of 114 for five
  • Indian wrestler Komal won bronze in the women's 59 kg category at the Under-23 World Wrestling Championships in Las Vegas, defeating Kazakhstan's Viktoriia Khusainova 7–2. Fellow Indian Amruta Pujari advanced to the women's 72 kg final after recording two pinfall victories
  • Indian shuttler Jagsher Singh Khangurra secured a bronze medal at the BWF World Junior Badminton Championships in Cairo
  • The Supreme Court of India upheld the Bombay High Court's decision quashing the 2020 write-off of ₹8,415 crore in additional tier-1 bonds issued by Yes Bank (Yes Bank). The court ruled that the bank's administrator lacked the authority to extinguish the bonds under the final reconstruction scheme, strengthening bondholders' claims
  • The Supreme Court issued notices to the Election Commission of India, Delhi Police and opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav, in separate petitions concerning electoral-roll revision and protests held in Delhi on October 10–12. The court also directed the preservation of CCTV footage linked to allegations of police excesses
  • The Supreme Court ruled that a person converting from Hinduism to Islam cannot automatically claim backward-class reservation benefits in the new religious community solely on the basis of their previous caste status. The judgment upheld the Madras High Court's decision striking down a 2024 Tamil Nadu government order that permitted such certification for specified communities
  • The Election Commission of India ordered a Special Summary Revision of electoral rolls in 14 states and three Union Territories, using January 1, 2027, as the qualifying date for voter eligibility. The draft rolls are scheduled for publication on November 12, claims and objections will be accepted until December 11, and the final rolls are due on January 4, 2027
Delhi HC refuses to ban CJP's Tiranga rally at Central Park in Connaught Place today /////// Police says will control and regulate it /////// NDMC closes the park for the public on Friday and Saturday
oppn parties
Booking Celebrities For Sedition: Where Will This Lead To?

By Sunil Garodia

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

Does writing an open letter to the Prime Minister of the country highlighting certain unpunished criminal acts amount to sedition? Yes, if an FIR lodged in Bhagalpur in Bihar is to be believed. The police in Bhagalpur has registered an FIR against 49 celebrities, including filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan and historian Ram Chandra Guha, among others, for writing an open letter to PM Modi in July this year where they regretted the fact that mobs were lynching people over religion and food habits and these acts were going unpunished.

When things happen in a nation, there will be hundreds of different views. Some people will support the acts, either passively or actively while others will remain neutral. But there will always be a minority (or even a majority) that will not support the acts and will protest against them, again either through words or by even actively resisting the miscreants. But none of the above can be truly called sedition, which is defined as "conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of the state". But as the ruling dispensation becomes more allergic to the dissenting view, the definition of sedition will become dangerously narrow.

But can the open letter that was written to the Prime Minister count as conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of the state? It was an earnest attempt by thinking Indians to put across their views to the highest authority in the government about something that was happening with alarming regularity in the country which they did not like. They just pointed out that such barbaric acts tarnished the nation’s image and the perpetrators should be punished and the Prime Minister should speak out against such acts. It was an appeal from the heart and there was no sedition involved.

If such dissenting view and appeal for sanity are to be considered sedition then no civil dialogue is possible. The letter did not tell the Prime Minister that if he did not act or if the administration did not act the writers would take the law in their hands and stop the miscreants. It asked the Prime Minister to use his office to put a stop to the heinous crime. There is nothing wrong with that and the signatories did not break any law. The Bihar police should immediately withdraw the FIR and desist from registering such FIRs before understanding the matter.

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