At an event organised last week in memory of actor and activist Vira Sathidar, a group of young cultural activists sang the lyrics of Faiz’s famous Hum Dekhenge. The Nagpur police have now booked the organisers and the event’s speaker under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which pertains to sedition, along with other sections of the BNS, including Section 196 (promoting enmity between groups) and Section 353 (statements conducive to public mischief).

Sathidar, an accomplished actor, prolific writer, journalist, and political thinker, died on April 13, 2021, after battling COVID-19 for over a week. Satidhar was also an Ambedkarite and the editor of Vidrohi magazine. Since his passing, his wife, Pushpa, is one of the organisers of the annual memorial. A committee was formed after Sathidar’s death under the name ‘Vira Sathidar Smruti Samanvay Samiti’ which has been instrumental in organising the annual event. This year, social activist Uttam Jagirdar was invited to speak. Although the FIR does not name individuals explicitly, it refers to the event’s organiser and speaker.

At the event organised on May 13 at the Vidarbha Sahitya Sangh, attended by over 150 people, Jagirdar talked about the contentious Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024. The  BJP-led state government is aggressively pushing to convert this bill into a law and implement it. Activists and academics believe this bill, if enacted, will lead to blatant violations of human rights and allow dissenting voices to be labeled “urban Naxals”.

The FIR, filed by one local Nagpur resident Dattatray Shirke, cites a news report aired on ABP Majha, a Marathi channel. The channel was likely the first to find issue in reciting Faiz’s poetry in India. In his complaint, Shirke claims, “At a time when the country valiantly fought Pakistani forces, the radical left in Nagpur were busy singing Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poem.

Shirke further claims that the line “Takht hilaane ki zaroorat hai (a need to shake the throne)” constitutes a direct threat to the government. However, while the FIR quotes the above line, the actual line in the poem is “sab takht giraye jayenge”. The poem was performed by young Mumbai-based cultural activists from Samata Kala Manch.

Despite an ongoing stay by the Supreme Court on the application of sedition charges, the Nagpur police have booked the organisers and speakers under the section. On May 11, 2022, the apex court had issued a historic order, staying all pending trials, appeals, and proceedings under section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code until the sedition law’s re-examination was complete. Since then, the BJP-led government has replaced the IPC with the BNS. However, the new law does not eliminate the sedition provision. Instead, the BNS introduces Section 152, which closely resembles the sedition law without explicitly using the word ‘sedition’.

Journalist arrested on same month

This is the second case this month in which the Nagpur police have targeted an individual’s freedom of expression. Earlier this month, a 26-year-old Kerala-based journalist, Rejaz M. Sheeba Sydeek, visiting Nagpur, was arrested for posting a photo of himself posing with two fake guns and opposing the Indian Army.

Initially investigated by the Nagpur city police and now handled by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), Rejaz is accused of opposing Operation Sindoor – India’s military strikes against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The agency has also alleged that Rejaz has connections with banned organisations, including the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. These banned organisations have radically different ideologies and the police have accused Rejaz of espousing ideologies of each of these banned groups.

Vira Sathidar’s endless protest

During his lifetime, Sathidar faced constant harassment from the police due to his political activism, keeping him under their radar. In a long interview with The Wire, months before his death, Sathidar had raised concern over the government’s tactics of employing new methods to control its citizens. For instance, while shooting for the film Court in 2013, the Gondia police arrived unannounced on the Mumbai set, searching for a “Naxal from Nagpur.” A year before his death, after raising issues against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur, his house was raided by local police. During the raid, a sword was found, but local youths chased the police away.

In October 2020, when the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet in the Elgar Parishad case, Sathidar’s name appeared among the so-called “urban Naxals,” a term loosely used by the Devendra Fadnavis-led government to target dissenters. Now, with the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, the state government seeks to formalise the term “urban Naxal” within the legal framework.

The government had made several attempts to criminalise Satidhar when he was alive and such efforts have seemingly continued even after his death.

Courtesy: The Wire

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On June 13, Nagpur Deputy Police Commissioner issued a notice to all police stations in Nagpur reiterating the court’s stand. The notice states that if any person comes to the police station and shoots a video of police personnel, it does not amount to an offence and that no police personnel should stop such a person from taking pictures or shooting a video. A similar notice was issued on December 28, 2022 by the Nagpur Police and yet the orders were not being followed. The June notice states that despite the December notice, they received information that police personnel were obstructing people from taking pictures or videos in police stations or of police officers on duty.

Nagpur Police Commissioner, Amitesh Kumar, addressing the media said, “the legal position is that a police station is a public place and the police personnel are public servants. In the interest of transparency, those who want to record videos of police officers, they can do so and nobody can file a case against them. Even when police officers are performing their duty on the streets, their videos can be recorded. Only in case of female officers, their dignity should be upheld and no such videos should be taken that would hurt the modesty of a woman. Apart from this, people have the right to record videos of police personnel in the police station or on the streets in the course of their duty and nobody should stop them or obstruct them”.

Bombay High Court’s stand

The order in question order was delivered by the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on July 26, 2022 whereby the bench of Justices Manish Pitale and Valmiki Menezes had quashed a case lodged against one Ravindra Upadhyay under OSA for recording a video inside a police station in March 2018. The bench held that a police station is not a ‘prihibited place’ as defined under section 2(8) of OSA. The definition is exhaustive, however, it does not include a police station in it. The court had clearly stated that shooting a video inside a police station is not an offence in itself under the OSA.

In another order, in December 2022, the Bombay High Court had quashed an FIR filed against a man from Solapur who was booked for spying under the official Secrets Act (OSA). The bench of Justice Revati Mohite-Dere and Justice Prithviraj Chavan had held that the law cannot be misused to torment citizens. The court had expressed shock that the FIR was filed because the man was clicking a photograph of the police station in Akluj, Solapur.

The court even directed compensation of Rs.25,000 to be paid to the petitioner and the same to be recovered from the salary of the police personnel who lodged a complaint against the petitioner. “We are shocked and appalled, how the concerned police officer could have even lodged an offence… We cannot comprehend how an FIR could have even been registered on the basis of the said photograph, that too, for a serious offence under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act,” the bench observed.

The petitioner was clicking photographs of a police officer speaking in a friendly manner with the person with whom he had a family dispute.

“Invocation of Section 3 of the Act can have drastic consequences on the person against whom it is invoked. It could impact one’s reputation, job, career and so on. It cannot be lightly invoked, to jeopardise someone’s life and career. Law cannot be misused / abused and must not be used as a tool for harassing or tormenting persons. It is the duty of the police to protect people and act in accordance with law,” Justice Mohit-Dere had orally observed, reported The Indian Express.

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In the said complaint, CJP had flagged these two events, where demands for the declaration of India as a Hindu nation were also raised, and the speakers and members had indulged in peddling various conspiracy theories to generate hate towards Muslims. Through this complaint, CJP highlighted that Bajrang Dal (BD) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) have been organising such trishul distribution events regularly in the state of Rajasthan, and have been creating disharmony, furthering their communal agenda. In reference to this, the complaint emphasised that since Maharashtra has been on the target of such Hindutva groups from November 2022, it is essential that the authorities urgently take action over these trishul distribution events being organised in Maharashtra, before these spread to other areas, districts and cities. The organisation has pointed out that these actions and speeches amount to nothing less than unlawful acts to mobs to take law into their own hands, intimiditate and commit violence. They also generate a sense of insecurity among vulnerable sections, India’s Muslims.

At the event organised on May 2, a speaker had also delivered the hate speech, while openly giving calls for using the said trishuls to stop “love jihad” and religious conversions. He had said, “But they are converting our Hindu girls. Bajrang Dal must work against it. Religious conversion is taking place in good localities as well. These Christian pastors and Muslim maulvis take advantage of the uneducated people, who are not aware of the law and do religious conversion.”

In the said complaint to the Nagpur police, CJP had sought swift and stringent action against the speakers, members and the extremist organisation of Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad under sections of the Arms Act and certain sections of the IPC in view to the overall unsafe atmosphere for the Muslim community that is being generated through the systemic and the perpetrated use of hate speech and writing within the country. Reliance had also been put upon the recent judgments of the Supreme Court in the complaint. Urgent action was then urged as such expression of targeted and extreme hate with a clear communal objective to establish religious hegemony upon a community that is already a minority in numbers in the country, is deplorable and against the constitutional values that we uphold as citizens of this country.

It was also stressed upon in the complaint that such speech and hate content has the direct potential to cause physical and mentally bodily harm to marginalized groups, their women and render their already insecure life further eroded of dignity and equality.

The entire complaint can be read here:

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