Sedition Laws: A Judge Stands Up To An "Arrest-Happy" Police Force
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
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-02-19 10:45:19
About the Author
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
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What happens when the police force become hyperactive and uses the sedition laws injudiciously (and a mild term is being used here) to try and silence dissenters? When one of these cases reaches the courts, a judge like Delhi Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana stands up and declares bravely that sedition laws cannot be used to "quieten the disquiet".
Judge Rana made another observation that is telling. He said that it is a "seriously debatable issue" whether Section 124A (relating to sedition) can be invoked in the case before the court. This observation implies that the court felt that the police where trivializing an important section by charging people under it for cases that did not relate to sedition as understood by law.
The case before the court involved two men, Devi Lal Burdak and Swaroop Ram, arrested by the Delhi Police earlier this month for allegedly posting a fake video on Facebook during the ongoing farmers' protest. The court released the duo on conditional bail and also dismissed charges of forgery against them by saying that it fails "to understand as to how come the offence of forgery is attracted in the instant case unless there is some false document, as statutorily defined under section 464 of IPC, is created by anyone".
The court categorically stated that "in the absence of any exhortation, call, incitement or instigation to create disorder or disturbance of public peace by resort to violence or any allusion or oblique remark or even any hint towards this objective, attributable to the accused, I suspect that Section 124 A (sedition) IPC can be validly invoked against the applicant. In my considered opinion, on a plain reading of the tagline attributed to the accused, invocation of Section 124A IPC is a seriously debatable issue."
The police used to have "trigger happy" special squads who were used to eliminate goons, though selectively, most recently in UP. But now killing seems to be passe. The police now have "arrest happy" squads who incarcerate people invoking Section 124A of the IPC or Section 295A of the IPC read with Section 41 of the CrPC to muzzle dissent. To the police all dissenters are like "grey matter criminals" and harassing them is the best tool they, goaded by their political masters, can think of silencing them into submission. It is obvious that the government wants everyone to have the same opinion of all things (which obviously will be the opinion of the government). Will it not be better, then, for it to rule over a nation of programmed robots?
pic courtesy: cropped from an image at lawtendo.com
