The Madras High Court, in a recent order, quashed a first information report (FIR) registered against research scholar Lois Sofia who was booked for having raised slogans against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on board a flight in 2018. Justice P Dhanapal of the Madurai bench passed the order on Wednesday, quashing all proceedings against Sofia in the 2018 case.
While the Court’s detailed order has not been published yet, Sofia’s lawyer D Geetha told the media that the Court ruled that raising slogans did not amount to a cognisable offence. Sofia, a research scholar from Canada, was booked in September 2018 after she shouted “fascist BJP government down, down” on board a flight to Thoothukudi in the presence of former Tamil Nadu BJP president and current Governor of Telangana, Tamilisai Soundararajan.
Following the sloganeering, Soundararajan engaged in a verbal spat with Sofia at the airport and subsequently filed a complaint against her.
Sofia was charged under Sections 505 and 290 of IPC on charges of having made statements creating public mischief and for creating public nuisance. Subsequent to her arrest, Sofia had been granted bail by a Thoothukudi Court.
After the FIR against Sofia, her father also had filed a complaint before Pudukkottai police against Soundararajan and her followers alleging that they had abused, intimidated, and threatened his daughter at the airport. He had also approached the local judicial magistrate claiming the police were not registering an FIR. The magistrate had then directed the police to act upon the complaint.