The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that no cognisable offence for the filing of a first information report had been made out on a petition against alleged acts of hate speech by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma in 2020, Live Law reported.
The judgement was delivered by a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta while dealing with a petition filed by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat against a Delhi High Court order that upheld a trial court’s refusal to direct the registration of a case against the BJP leaders.
At a rally in January 2020, Thakur was heard shouting “desh ke gaddaron ko” and the crowd responded with “goli maaro saalon ko”. The slogan meant “shoot the traitors”, with an expletive used for “traitors” being a reference to those protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
In his speech, Parvesh Verma had told an audience that the “lakhs of protestors” who have gathered at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh would enter their homes to “rape their sisters and daughters and kill them”.
The speeches were made ahead of the Assembly elections in Delhi in 2020. Soon after, riots had broken out in North East Delhi in February that year, in which 53 persons died and hundreds were injured. The majority of victims were Muslim.
In her petition seeking an FIR against the two BJP leaders, Karat had alleged that the speeches threatened use of force to remove protesters who were agitating at Shaheen Bagh against the Citizenship Amendment Act and to promote enmity towards Muslims by portraying them as invaders who will enter houses to rape and kill.
In June 2022, the High Court had upheld the verdict of the trial court and said that the petitioners had not followed the prescribed mechanism under the Code of Criminal Procedure for seeking the registration of an FIR in such cases.
Karat had then approached the Supreme Court.
In its order on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said that it did not find any grounds to interfere with the High Court order on merits, Live Law reported.
However, the bench said that it found fault with the High Court’s observation that prior sanction was required before a magistrate can order the filing of an FIR under Section 156(3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The Supreme Court noted that prior sanction was not required at the pre-cognisance stage and set aside that part of the High Court order.
However, the bench added that on viewing the material on record, including the alleged act of hate speeches, it agreed with the trial court and the High Court that no cognisable offence was made out against the BJP leaders, Live Law reported.
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