December 21, 2024

Was The Supreme Court Right In Refusing Relief To Nupur Sharma?

By Our Editorial Team
First publised on 2022-07-04 06:28:08

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In ordinary course, a citizen is not expected to be burdened with attending to several FIRs filed against her or him in different parts of the country for the same alleged offence as that curbs his or her fundamental rights and goes against precedent. But the Supreme Court refused to grant this relief to Nupur Sharma as it said that "if the conscience of the Court is not satisfied, the law can be moulded". But is this correct? In the case T T Anthony vs State of Kerala, the Supreme Court had held that "there can be no second F.I.R. and consequently there can be no fresh investigation on receipt of every subsequent information in respect of the same cognizable offence or the same occurrence or incident giving rise to one or more cognizable offences." Yet, multiple FIRs have been filed against Nupur Sharma all over India in the same case subjecting her to multiple trials for the same offence.  

The right against double jeopardy, which essentially means that a person cannot be tried for the same offence twice, has been guaranteed to all citizens by Article 20(2) of the Constitution. Further, in the Arnab Goswami case, a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice D Y Chnadrachud had categorically stated that "a litany of our decisions - to refer to them individually would be a parade of the familiar - has firmly established that any reasonable restriction on fundamental rights must comport with the proportionality standard, of which one component is that the measure adopted must be the least restrictive measure to effectively achieve the legitimate state aim. Subjecting an individual to numerous proceedings arising in different jurisdictions on the basis of the same cause of action cannot be accepted as the least restrictive and effective method of achieving the legitimate state aim in prosecuting crime."

This clearly shows that despite Article 20(2) and judicial precedent, Supreme Court benches have been inconsistent in applying the law for a variety of reasons, "conscience of the court" not being satisfied being the latest one in Nupur Sharma's case. In her case, the bench sought to create a difference in that it said that Arnab Goswami's case related to freedom of press but does not Article 20(2) guarantee the same right to all citizens? In fact, the Supreme Court has categorically said that in such a situation, the petitioner can approach the Supreme Court to club the proceedings. Whatever be Nupur Sharma's fault, as a citizen of India was she not entitled to relief from something that violates her fundamental rights?