Brinda Karat’s plea for FIR against BJP’s Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma, SC seeks Delhi police's response
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Delhi Police to respond to the petition filed by CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat over alleged hate speech by Union Minister Anurag Thakur and BJP MP Parvesh Verma.
A bench of Justices KM Joseph and BV Nagarathna issued the notice to the city police and said the response should be filed within three weeks. During the hearing, the bench observed prima facie that the magistrate’s stand that sanction was required for lodging FIRs against the two BJP leaders was not correct.
The BJP leaders allegedly gave hate speeches over anti-CAA protests and a trial court refused to order that an FIR be registered against them. The Delhi High Court in June 2022 dismissed a petition by CPI(M) leaders Brinda Karat and KM Tiwari against the trial court's order. The High Court said that under the law, a sanction is required to be obtained from the competent authority for the registration of FIR in the present facts.
Now, Karat has approached the top court in the same matter.
The CPI(M) leaders had claimed that Thakur and Verma sought to "incite people as a result of which three incidents of firing took place at two different protest sites in Delhi." At a rally in Rithala in the national capital on January 27, 2020, Thakur allegedly asked the crowd to raise the slogan "shoot the traitors" while talking against the anti-CAA protesters of Shaheen Bagh. Verma also allegedly made inflammatory speeches against the Shaheen Bagh protesters on January 28, 2020.
They sought FIR against the BJP leaders under sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.), 153-B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), and 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the IPC.
IPC sections 298 (uttering, words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation_ were also in the complaint.
On August 26, 2021, the trial court dismissed the complaint and said that it was not sustainable as the requisite sanction from the central government, which was the competent authority, had not been obtained.
