No democracy without freedom of choice, free speech: Court – The Indian Express

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday quashed two different FIRs registered against BJP leader Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga and former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas by the Punjab Police over their statements against AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal.

A bench of Justice Anoop Chitkara heard the petitions separately and passed two separate orders.

Bagga was booked on charges of making provocative statements, promoting enmity and criminal intimidation following a protest outside the Delhi residence of the AAP convener for his remarks on the film Kashmir Files. He had allegedly criticised Kejriwal for his statement on the movie Kashmir Files.

On April 6, 2022, Bagga had moved the high court seeking the quashing of an FIR registered against him on the complaint of AAP Punjab spokesperson and Lok Sabha in-charge, Dr Sunny Singh Ahluwalia.

The complaint referred to a statement allegedly made by Bagga and said it constituted instigation/incitement to cause violence, use of force or imminent hurt to Arvind Kejriwal and other AAP members in a pre-designed, well-planned and orchestrated manner.

The Punjab Police had booked Bagga under various charges, including promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, etc., doing acts prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony and making statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes, among others, of the Indian Penal Code.

Seeking that the FIR be quashed, Senior Advocates R S Rai and Chetan Mittal with Advocates Anil Mehta and Gautam Dutt appearing for Bagga contended that the registration of the FIR was wholly mala fide. Ahluwalia intentionally concealed the actual statement and referred only to some parts of it to get the FIR registered, they said.

Appearing on behalf of Punjab government, Senior Advocate Puneet Bali opposing the plea of Bagga while referring to various tweets of Bagga contended that the accused intended to convey misinformation, spread communal disharmony, and create a hostile and vicious environment through them.

Vishwas was accused of levelling imputations about the involvement of Kejriwal with certain nefarious and anti-social elements in an interview ahead of the state assembly polls.

In a separate petition, Vishwas had moved the high court on April 26 seeking to quash the FIR registered against him by the Punjab Police for allegedly giving inflammatory statements against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

On April 12, the Rupnagar police booked Vishwas under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, criminal conspiracy, publishing or circulating news with intent to create enmity on the grounds of religion or race, etc., on the complaint of Narinder Singh.

Seeking that the FIR be quashed, Vishwas counsel Senior Advocates Chetan Mittal and R S Rai along with Advocates Mayank Aggarwal and Rubina Virmani said that he is a Hindi poet, a founder-member of AAP and a former member of its national executive body. The counsel said that Vishwas was wrongly involved in the FIR and that it was sheer abuse of the process of law and alleged that it was politically motivated.

The counsel for Punjab government, Senior Advocate Bali, in the case of Vishwas argued that the investigation was in a nascent stage when this court had stayed further proceedings in the case. The investigation on crucial aspects of the case is yet to be carried out, and so, if this court proceeds further to quash the FIR, it would amount to not letting the police fulfill its statutory obligation to investigate a crime of serious ramifications.

Hearing the plea of Bagga, Justice Chitkara said, The purported statement of the petitioner is a protest against the statement made by the leader of AAP in power in Delhi and Punjab, where the BJP is in the Opposition. Being a political activist and an official spokesperson of a political party, as a shadow of the incumbent, it was well within his rights to make the people aware of the response of an opposite political leaderAccording to the petitioner, the movie, The Kashmir Files, had exposed the genocide of a minority, i.e., Hindus, in Kashmir. The petitioner put forth his displeasure because the party in power did not accept his demand to make the movie tax-free. It was well within his rights to raise such protests.

On the matter of Vishwas, Justice Chitkara said, There is no prima facie material connecting the incident of April 12, 2022, with the interviews of the petitioner, and there are missing links. Thus, it would not be permissible to expand the scope of the complaint to connect the alleged subsequent incident by fishing the evidence and on the assumptions and suspicions of the complainant.

Giving a clean chit to the two leaders, the high court observed that there cannot be any democracy without the freedom of choice and free speech.

The judge invoked Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which preserves the inherent powers of the high court to prevent abuse of the process of any court or to secure the ends of justice, and issued two separate orders to quash the FIRs and all subsequent proceedings against Bagga and Vishwas.

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No democracy without freedom of choice, free speech: Court - The Indian Express