Union minister's hate speech: Madras HC refuses to quash case

Chennai: The Madras High Court said that the case against BJP leader and Union Minister of State Shobha Karandlaje in the case of hate speech related to the bomb blast in Rameswaram Cafe in Bengaluru cannot be quashed. Justice G rejected the request to end the investigation. Jayachandran directed the prosecution to submit the case record to the court.

On Wednesday, the court questioned the minister, who is the MP from Karnataka’s Bangalore North, asking her on what basis she could claim that bombers of the attack on March 1 had been trained in Tamil Nadu before the National Investigation Agency (NIA) even conducts searches in Chennai.

The court noted that her statement means she was aware of the attack, who were the bombers and who trained them. Therefore, she should have alerted the police about the same as a responsible citizen.

It was on March 20 the Madurai cyber crime police in the state registered a case against the BJP MP following a complaint, accusing Shobha of promoting enmity between groups.

In a viral video, Shobha could be heard saying, “People from Tamil Nadu come here, get trained there, and plant bombs here. They placed a bomb in the café.” The video and her statement stirred widespread condemnation and outrage, leading her to apologise later.

However, her counsel had argued in court that she was raising concerns about internal security and that she had never intended to pit Kannadigas against Tamil.

NIA arrested two people in April in a blast case, and they were identified as Mussavir Hussain Shazib and Abdul Matheen Ahmed Taahaa. The former allegedly planted the bomb, while the latter was the mastermind of the attack, it is alleged.