A petition was filed in the Bombay High Court on Monday seeking contempt proceedings against actor Kangana Ranaut for violating an undertaking that she gave to the court in connection with the sedition case against her, Live Law reported.
Ranaut had promised the court that she will not make any public statement about the case. However, she put out a Twitter video on January 8 about the investigation in the case, before going to the police station to record her statement. The actor alleged that she was being mentally tortured for expressing her views.
The petition to begin the contempt proceedings was moved by casting director Munnawarali Sayyed, who had also filed the original complaint against Ranaut and her sister Rangoli Chandel. Sayyed said that Ranaut had posted the video in “utter disregard to the dignity, decorum and Order of the High Court which squarely falls within the ambit of Section 2 (b) and (c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971”.
He added: “The contemptuous intent and motive of tweeting the said police station visit is with sole and ulterior motive to gather support during her visit to the Police Station.”
On January 11, the Bombay High Court had extended the interim relief to Ranaut and Chandel in the sedition case. It said that no coercive action could be taken against them till January 25. Ranaut and Chandel had recorded their statement in the case at the Bandra police station on January 8. They were questioned for over two hours.
The case pertains to a first information report registered against Ranaut and Chandel, as directed by a Mumbai court, in October for allegedly trying to create hatred and communal tension through their social media posts.
The complainant, Sayyed, had argued that investigation was needed to ascertain the motive behind their tweets and to find out “who are the people backing such hatred to create communal tensions and sentiments against the government”. He also accused Ranaut of “maliciously bringing religion in all her tweets”.
Ranaut and her sister were booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to committing malicious or deliberate acts with the intention of outraging religious feelings of citizens, sedition, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence or language and common intention. They moved the High Court on November 23 seeking to quash the FIR against them.
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