The Supreme Court on Thursday asked a Delhi Metropolitan Magistrate to proceed in terms of the Criminal Procedure Code with regard to a chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police on April 4 after an investigation into hate speeches allegedly made in a Hindu Yuva Vahini event in December 2021.
“The Metropolitan Magistrate, Saket, has liberty to proceed in terms of the governing provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code,” a Bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and J.B. Paridwala observed.
The order came after Additional Solicitor General K.M. Nataraj, for the police, informed the court about the filing of the chargesheet.
Advocate Shadan Farasat, for petitioner Tushar Gandhi, urged that the police should place on record a copy of the chargesheet in the apex court. He said the incident pertained to December 2021. An FIR was registered only in May after the intervention of the Supreme Court. “They then took over nine months to file the chargesheet,” he submitted.
Mr. Nataraj said the Magistrate was bound to provide a copy if he took cognisance of the chargesheet.
The Bench said the Magistrate should be left to take a call in accordance with the law. The court also disposed of a contempt petition against the then Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana, saying it was not expedient to pursue it in the interest of justice after the filing of the chargesheet.
Mr. Farasat had argued in the contempt petition that there was a clear violation of the Supreme Court’s direction in the Tehseen Poonawala case in which the court had said the police should take preventive steps to stop such incidents from happening.
In April last year, the Delhi Police had told the Supreme Court that there were no instances of hate speech at the Delhi dharam sansad event nor was there any “open call for genocide of Muslims in order to achieve ethnic cleansing”. The words spoken at the event were, instead, about “empowering one’s religion to prepare itself to face the evils which could endanger its existence, which is not even remotely connected to a call for genocide of any particular religion”.
In October last year, a Supreme Court Bench led by Justice K.M. Joseph had said it was “tragic what we have reduced religion to” in the 21st century and a “climate of hate prevails in the country” while directing police and authorities to immediately and suo motu register cases against hate speech makers and offenders who commit acts of communal violence without waiting for a complaint to be filed.
