Bhuvana Marni
Published on: October 12, 2022 at 22:44 IST
On Wednesday, the Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed 2 FIRs against BJP politician Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga and former AAP Leader and poet Kumar Vishwas, who the Punjab Police had said had posted inflammatory statements on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and propagated false information and caused intercommunal disharmony.
The applications were considered independently by a bench of Justice Anoop Chitkara, who issued two different rulings.
On April 6, 2022, Bagga filed a petition with the high court asking for the dismissal of a complaint that had been made against him by Dr. Sunny Singh Ahluwalia, the Lok Sabha in-charge and spokesperson for the AAP in Punjab.
A statement allegedly said that Bagga is said to have made was mentioned in the lawsuit.
It 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 charged Bagga with several offences under the Indian Penal Code, including promoting enmity between various groups based on race, religion, or place of birth; acting in a way that is harmful to maintaining harmony; and making statements that incite enmity, hatred, or ill will between classes.
Senior attorneys R S Rai and Chetan Mittal, who were representing Bagga, had argued that the filing of the FIR was malafide in their request that the FIR be invalidated.
They were joined by attorneys Mayank Aggarwal and Gautam Dutt.
They said that Ahluwalia purposefully withheld the entirety of the statement and only alluded to some portions of it to lodge the FIR, “There is nothing in the statement which would constitute any offence. There is no intimidation or incitement to violence…the statement has to be appreciated in the context in which it is made.”
“It is only intended to convey that till Kejriwal apologizes for his statement which was considered objectionable by the petitioner, protests and demonstrations against him would continue,” the counsel for Bagga further contended.
On April 26, Vishwas filed a second appeal with the high court asking it to dismiss the FIR the Punjab Police had filed against him for allegedly making inflammatory remarks about Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, among other allegations.
On April 12, in response to a complaint by Narinder Singh, the Rupnagar police arrested Vishwas under the Indian Penal Code’s provisions for encouraging enmity between groups, criminal conspiracy, publishing or spreading the news with the grounds to create chaos over issues of race or religion, among other things.
His team, who included senior attorneys Chetan Mittal and R. S. Rai, as well as attorneys Mayank Aggarwal and Rubina Virmani, requested that the FIR be dropped because the defendant is a Hindi poet, a founding member of the AAP, and a former official of the party’s national executive body.
Vishwas claimed that he was unjustly included in the FIR, that the process had been abused, and that it was politically motivated.