New Delhi: A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Bengaluru convicted a 21-year-old engineering student for ‘celebrating’ the 2019 Pulwama terror attack in which over 40 CRPF jawans were killed by posting derogatory comments on Facebook.
The accused, Faiz Rasheed, commented on several Facebook posts by news channels which detailed the Pulwama incident. The comments celebrated the attack, ridiculed the fallen soldiers, lauded the attackers and warned members of the Hindu community of ‘things to come’.
According to a LiveLaw report, the man not only celebrated the attack but also posted derogatory pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders. He also posted a picture of the suicide bomber responsible for the terror attack, the report says.
Thereafter, a suo motu case was registered against Rasheed and he was charged with Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 153A (Promoting enmity between groups on the basis of religion etc.); 124 (Sedition) and Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
It should be noted that the court did not try the accused for charges under the sedition law since the Supreme Court had put the colonial-era law in abeyance in May this year. The law is being reconsidered by the Union government.
After the prosecution presented evidence of the charges before the court and the accused submitted his own admissions during the cross-examination, the court said:
“The accused has not made derogatory comments one or two times. He made the comments to all the posts made by all the news channels on facebook. Moreover, he was not an illiterate or ordinary man. He was an engineering student at the time of commission of the offence and he made the posts and and comments intentionally on his facebook account. He felt happy about killing of the great souls and celebrated the death of the great souls as he as he was not an Indian. Therefore, the offence committed by the accused is against this great nation and heinous in nature.”
The court further observed that the accused’s acts threatened the harmony between different religious groups in the country and were likely to disturb public tranquillity. Moreover, reasoning that the offence under Section 153A was made out, the court noted how some members of the Muslim community offered support to Rasheed’s comments and some members of the Hindu community responded to his posts by making derogatory comments about Muslims.
“…the accused has taken the issue of Rama Mandir in his comments which instigates the religious feelings of Hindu community. He has also commented as one Muslim is equal to 40 persons and Muslim boys are always funny. Further there is evidence to show that the Hindu community people made derogatory comments by enraging the comments made by the accused…”
As such, additional city civil and sessions judge Gangadhara C.M., presiding over the NIA court, sentenced the accused to imprisonment for five years for offences under IPC Section 153A and UAPA Section 13.
In a separate development, the Karnataka high court observed earlier this month that protesting against the Supreme Court’s 2019 judgment on the Ayodhya title case amounts to “nothing but promoting enmity between two groups on the grounds of religion”.
The court was hearing a petition by Safwan, an alleged member of the Campus Front of India (CFI) – an affiliate of the recently banned Popular Front of India (PFI), seeking the quashing of suo motu criminal proceedings initiated against him at the Konaje police station in Mangaluru. The case was registered against a group of alleged CFI and PFI workers, including the petitioner, for entering the Mangaluru University campus and chanting slogans against the top court’s judgment in 2019.
The group had been charged under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section 153-A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.), read with Section 149 (Every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) and Section 3 of the Karnataka Open Places Disfigurement Act, according to a LiveLaw report.
In November 2019, a Supreme Court bench led by then Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi ruled in favour of the Hindu parties in the dispute over the land in Ayodhya on which the Babri Masjid once stood. The court had awarded the land to the Hindu parties while saying that the Sunni Waqf Board would be given five acres at a separate “prominent” location in Ayodhya.
In the October 14 hearing in the present petition, the Karnataka high court observed that the protests and sloganeering by the group of alleged CFI and PFI activists in Mangaluru University amounted to nothing but promoting enmity between two groups on the basis of religion and was “prejudicial to [the] maintenance of harmony in the Mangaluru area”.
“There are witnesses, who have stated the presence of the petitioner among the group, who agitated against the judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court delivered in Ayodhya-Babri Masjid case, which is nothing but the offences against the State punishable under Section 153-A of IPC,” LiveLaw quoted the bench as saying.
However, the court noted that the counsel for the petitioner failed to argue on the point of law that under Section 196 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), no court can take cognisance of offences registered under IPC Section 153A, among other sections, without the prior sanction of the Union or state governments.
It further noted that the high court government pleader, too, failed to provide any such sanction for prosecution before the court. As such, the high court accepted the petition by the accused and quashed proceedings against him. The Wire
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