SC grants protection from arrest to Advocate Prashant Bhushan in case registered by Gujarat Police

On Friday, the Supreme Court granted protection to Activist Lawyer Prashant Bhushan from any coercive action in an FIR lodged against him at Rajkot in Gujarat for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of the Hindus.

The FIR was lodged by former Army personnel Jaidev Rajnikant Joshi at Rajkot alleging that Bhushan hurt religious sentiments of the Hindus by tweeting against re-telecast of Ramayana and Mahabharata serials on DD during the lockdown imposed to contain Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

A bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and Sanjiv Khanna, in the proceedings conducted through video conferencing, issued notice to the Gujarat Police and listed the plea of Bhushan for hearing after two weeks.

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for Bhushan, sought quashing of the FIR lodged against the activist lawyer and sought interim protection against any coercive measure against him for the time being.

During hearing, Justice Ashok Bhushan asked him:

“ Mr. Dave, anybody can watch anything on TV. How can you say people cannot watch this and that?” to which Mr. Dave replied, “ No, we are not people watching something on TV. But we are on FIR.”

It seems to be a dig at the Union Minister Prakash Javdekar who had tweeted a picture of himself watching Ramayan on TV,  while millions of migrants took the streets to return to their homes early last month.

The FIR mentions offence under Section 295A, Section 505(1) (b) of IPC.

Bhushan states that this offence is included in FIR for retweeting two tweets of Ashlin Mathews (National Herald editor) and Kannan Gopinathan(former IAS Officer). Ashlin mathews had criticised direction of Union Government to declare sports stadium as jail for housing migrant workers. Kannan Gopinathan had criticised the order cutting salaries of AIIMS doctors/staff to contribute to PM Cares Fund even as they were in distressing conditions doing their duty.

Bhushan asserted that his retweets were valid criticism of Government, and cannot amount to an offence under Section 505(1) (b) which deals with the act of creating alarm or fear to public inducing them to commit offence against public tranquility.

He stated in plea:

Bhushan had filed the plea on Thursday and it was listed before the bench on Friday.

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