The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted interim protection from arrest to Bhojpuri singer Neha Singh Rathore in a case pertaining to her social media posts about the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April, Live Law reported.
A bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and Atul S Chandurkar also issued a notice on Rathore’s plea challenging the Allahabad High Court order denying her anticipatory bail in the matter.
But the court said that Rathore must appear before the investigating officer when summoned.
The terror attack at Baisaran near Pahalgam town on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 17 injured. The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. All but three of those killed were Hindu.
In late April, Rathore was booked for a video posted on social media in which she said that the Pahalgam attack was an intelligence and security failure on the part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government.
She had also claimed in the video that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would seek votes in Bihar in the name of the attack just as he allegedly did after the 2019 Pulwama terror attack.
A first information report was registered against Rathore based on a complaint in Lucknow. She was booked for sedition under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and under the Information Technology Act.
During the hearing on Wednesday, the government claimed that Rathore had not cooperated with the investigation, Live Law reported.
Contesting the claim, her counsel said that Rathore had appeared before the investigating officer on Saturday.
In September, the Allahabad High Court had refused to quash the case, observing that the allegations prima facie disclosed a cognisable offence and warranted investigation. The court said that Rathore had used Modi’s name in a derogatory manner in her posts.
The singer challenged the ruling in the Supreme Court, which also refused to quash the case in October.
Advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Rathore before the Supreme Court, had contended that the charges invoked in the case, including sections related to mutiny and waging war against the state, were grossly disproportionate.
But the court had said that it would not interfere in the matter at this stage.
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