Nishka Srinivas Veluvali
Published On: January 22, 2022 at 11:45 IST
The Supreme Court has denied to entertain a Public Interest Litigation requesting strict censorship of social media posts by Bollywood Actress Kangana Ranaut and compiling of the First Information Reports (FIRs) against her for her statements made against the Sikh Community.
The Court , however, rejected the PIL and stated that the Mumbai Police will continue with their probe in this matter.
The Bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Bela Trivedi told the Petitioner Advocate Sardar Charanjeet Singh Chanderpal that, “The remedy you are seeking for cannot be granted under Article 32Petition and you would have to pursue relief under criminal law”.
The Bench continued to state that the Petitioner is not entitled to seek clubbing of FIRs as only the Accused or the Informant are eligible to so the same.
The Bench asserted that, “There are two possible solutions. Either you ignore the utterances made by her or avail remedy under law. We respect the community. We respect your faith…By speaking these utterances you are doing more disservice to the cause. Don’t try to prejudice the mind of the court. Don’t politicise it. We have read these utterances in your file”.
The Bench said that there is already a probe ongoing against the Actress and the PIL will intervene with the investigation which is not appropriate to which the Petitioner claimed that the Actress is endlessly giving out “outrageous” and “defamatory” statements like “Sikh farmers were Khalistani Terrorists” and is trying to display them as “anti-nationals”.
In response to this statement the Bench replied, “Don’t you think that common citizens understand this and know the differences?”
The Bench, at the outset told the Petitioner that he being a member of Bar, how can he even seek for the remedy of transfer of FIRs against the Actress and asked the Petitioner to withdraw his Petition.
The Petitioner responded that he belongs to Sikh community and he cannot any longer tolerate her defamatory and derogatory statements against his community. Hence, he cannot withdraw his Petition.
The Bench to this said that, “Mr. Charanjeet, we have also treaded with great caution. We have not said anything about those tweet/ or those statements. Because that’s the matter of investigation which is going on”.