The police in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district on Monday filed a sedition case against Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) MP Sanjay Raut for writing an allegedly objectionable article about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, The Times of India reported.
The case was filed based on a complaint by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Yavatmal district coordinator Nitin Bhutada, who alleged that an article Raut wrote on Sunday in the Shiv Sena newspaper Saamana was offensive. Raut is the executive editor of Saamana.
Bhutada said that the comments about the prime minister were uncalled for and that BJP workers would not tolerate such remarks.
The police filed a case under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to sedition, promoting enmity between different groups and statements creating or promoting enmity, The Hindu reported.
In May 2022, the Supreme Court put the sedition law in abeyance and ordered the Centre and the state governments to not file any new cases under the provision till it is re-examined. It had said that if a sedition case is filed, the accused persons can approach courts “for appropriate relief”.
Commenting on the case, Raut accused the BJP of engaging in censorship. “The BJP had no right to say that it stood up against the Emergency because the fight was against such kind of censorship,” he said. “The criticism in Saamana is political.”
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