Sreya Kanugula
The High Court of Allahabad gave protection to Aparna Purohit, an Amazon Prime official who heads the content team at the conglomerate’s office in India.
They did so to stop any coercive detention or arrest to take place against Ms. Purohit in connection to the first information report (FIR) filed against her on the ‘Tandav’ online TV series controversy.
She had registered an application for interim bail to be granted as per Section 438 of the Criminal Procedure Code under the law in front of the court.
Justice Siddharth had reserved the court’s order on the plea and had given directions to the authorities of the State that “till the pronouncement of order no coercive action shall be taken against the applicant.”
An FIR had been filed by the police department of Uttar Pradesh against Ms. Purohit for alleged offences committed as per Sections 153-A, 295-A, 505(1)(B), 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code as well as, Sections 66 and 67 of the Information Technology Act.
Besides the content-creator official, an FIR had been registered against Tandav’s direction, Mr. Ali Abbas Zafar, the series producer Mr. Himanshu Mehra as well as the writer Mr. Gaurav Solanki.
Reports had informed that apart from this FIR, several other complaints had been listed against the show’s creators and co-creators in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chandigarh, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh as well.
On the 20th of January, the High Court of Bombay had provided transit anticipatory bail to the applicants against the FIR registered on them in Uttar Pradesh.
On the 27th of January, the Supreme Court had outright refused to give the creators and the actors of the aforementioned web series any protection from being arrested.
“Your right to freedom of speech is not absolute,” the Apex Court had stated and asked them to go to the High Courts all over the country in order to be granted anticipatory bail.
‘Tandav’ apparently touched upon political content ranging from framer protests to student agitations to police encounters in the current light of the country in the show.
The series had also given commentary upon the prevailing scenario of politics in the country under the ruling of the government of PM Narendra Modi and the majority party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). And it had come under massive fire for it.