Highlighting sedition as the government’s choice weapon to choke dissent and free speech, Kudankulam anti-nuclear activist Dr. S.P. Udayakumar on Wednesday moved the Supreme Court against the wave of persecution unleashed by those in power against students, journalists and intellectuals who engage in social activism.
The petition cites the example of how 6,000 villagers and activists protesting the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu were slapped with sedition charges, that too, at the same police station between September and December 2011. Mr. Udayakumar was also one of those who suffered sedition charges. It traces the history of well-known writers, journalists and activists who were charges with sedition for taking a different view from the one propagated by the government.
The petition, filed by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi, cites the case of Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy who, along with some others, was booked for sedition in November 2010.The case of political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi who faced sedition charges in September 2012 and Dr. Binayak Sen in 2007 for his alleged “links” to Naxalites in Chhattisgarh. “These charges are framed with a view to instil fear and to scuttle dissent,” Mr. Udayakumar, accompanied by co-petitioner and NGO Common Cause, contended in the petition against the misuse of the colonial law represented by Section 124 A of the Indian Penal Code.
The petition quotes the Constitution Bench judgment of Kedarnath vs State of Bihar, in which the Supreme Court held that “only those acts, which involve incitement to violence or violence constitute a seditious act”.
“In the various cases that have been filed in the recent years, the charges of sedition against the accused have failed to stand up to judicial scrutiny,” the petition argued.
It has sought the court to intervene with the governemnt and seek a strict compliance of the Constitutional Bench judgment, which had held that the gist of the offence of sedition is “incitement to violence or tendency or the intention to create public disorder”.
The petition suggested that the court should pass a direction that a reasoned order from the Director General of Police or the Commissioner of Police concerned should be produced before the police register an FIR against someone for sedition or arresting him for a “seditious act”.
