Karnataka High Court stays probe against man for tweet on Bantwal woman’s murder case
Observing that “courts cannot permit criminality to be inferred by imagination when the words themselves refuse to yield such meaning”, the High Court of Karnataka
Observing that “courts cannot permit criminality to be inferred by imagination when the words themselves refuse to yield such meaning”, the High Court of Karnataka has stayed investigation into two separate criminal cases registered against a man at two different police stations for a single tweet related to recent murder of a young woman at the Bantwal bus stand in Dakshina Kannada district. Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the interim order on petitions filed by 37-year-old Kiran, while observing that the language used in the tweet, prima facie, did not contain any explicit reference to a specific religion, community, or caste.
The petitioner, a resident of Bengaluru, was booked under Section 353(2) [publishing false information with an intent to create or promote... feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities] of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) in a case registered at Bantwal police station, and under Section 192 [wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot...] of the BNS in a case filed at the High Grounds Police Station in Bengaluru. The tweet on X had stated: “Monster with wrist watch on his left hand, pants above his ankles, killed a girl at Bantwal bus stand, Karnataka.
He probably knows that even if they arrest him, Congress will quietly withdraw the case. Be that as it may, just hope the RSS gets registered soon.” The court pointed out that “it is only after an exercise of interpretation and inference, attempt is made to give it a communal colour.” While the former sentence in the tweet, on its plain reading, does not reveal any exhortation against a religious or identifiable group; the latter “is a comment on the governmental action” of withdrawing criminal cases on which the High Court itself had made critical remarks earlier, Justice Nagaprasanna pointed out.
The court further said that “it is unable to discern, albeit, prima facie, from the language employed, any overt or tacit reference that unmistakably targets a particular community” while stating that it is a fit case, based on principles laid down by the apex court, to interdict the investigation against the petitioner.
The BriefWire