Interim Protection from Arrest to Prashant Bhushan granted by Supreme Court.

The 2 Judge bench of Supreme Court comprising of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Sanjiv Khanna today (01-05-2020) granted interim protection from arrest to Advocate Prashant Bhushan in FIR registered against him by Gujarat Police alleging hurting of religious sentiments

The Fir was registered over the critical comment made by Bhushan in twitter (On March 28) against Union Minister Prakash Javadekar.

“As crores starve and walk hundreds of miles home due to the lockdown. Our heartless ministers celebrate consuming and feeding the opium of Ramayana and Mahabharata to the people!”

Alleging that this tweet amounted to hurting f religious sentiments a person even lodged a complaint under Section 295 A of Indian Penal Code along with 505(1)(b) of IPC.

In Writ Petition filed in the SC through Advocate Kamini Jaiswal, Bhushan states That his tweet was only highlighting the apathy of the Union Minister in handling the migrant workers crisis and was not intended to hurt any religious sentiments.

Adds that the Phrase “Religion is the opium of the masses” is a famous quote of Karl marx which has been used by the Delhi HC in 2012 judgement in the case Court on its own motion vs. Govt of NCT of Delhi.

He asserts that there was no intention on his part to hurt the religious sentiments and that his genuine criticism has been twisted out of the context to give a perverse meaning.

That no offence is made out against him even prima facie and FIR amounts to an infringement of his fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.

Further, the offence of 505(1)(b) is also included in the FIR retweeting two tweets of Ashlin Mathew ( editor of National Herald) and Kannan Gopinathan (former IAS Officer). His retweets was valid criticism of the government and cannot amount to offence under this section. Several persons have retweeted the tweets of Mathews and Gopinathan, only he has been selectively targeted. FIR is an abuse of process of law to muzzle valid criticism of governmental actions.

The FIR belatedly registered almost after 15 days is nothing but an attempt to curb criticism of the government actions and is malafide, vexatious, malicious, frivolous and an abuse of the process of law.

The bench ordered that “No coercive actions to be taken till the next date of hearing.

By Priyanka of Savitribai Phule Pune University