Prashant Kanojia is a freelance journalist based out of New Delhi. (Source: Facebook/Prashant Kanojia)Expressing its reservation over the arrest of freelance journalist Prashant Kanojia for alleged “objectionable” tweets against Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and other alleged inflammatory posts, the Supreme Court Tuesday ordered that he be immediately released on bail.
Hearing a habeas corpus petition filed by Kanojia’s wife, a vacation bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi however made it clear that the order should not be read as an approval of his social media posts adding that the state was free to proceed against him in accordance with the law.
Justice Banerjee asked how an arrest could be made over tweets, to which the Additional Solicitor General (ASG) appearing for UP government replied that Kanojia had made provocative tweets against gods and religion on previous occasions and therefore offence of public mischief under Section 505 of IPC was added in the list of charges. “We do not appreciate the tweets, but can you put him behind bars,” Justice Banerjee asked Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Vikramjit Banerjee who appeared for the state. Read in Bangla
Jagisha Arora, wife of Prashant Kanojia takes part in a protest with media members in New Delhi. (Reuters)Expressing dissatisfaction over the prosecutor’s remarks, the bench said that the Magistrate’s order of remanding Kanojia till June 22 was “not appropriate”. The bench added it “need not comment on the contents of the tweets” and that “the question is, should the petitioner have been deprived of his liberty over them.”
Editorial | Lucknow’s long arm
“The answer to that is is prima facie in the negative. Fundamental rights under Article 19 and 21 are non-negotiable,” it added.
The bench said the concern was about the deprivation of liberty. “Sometimes we suffer the brunt of social media, sometimes, it is just and sometimes unjust. Question is only deprivation of liberty,” the bench said asking the state police to show magnanimity. The court noted that everything that is put up on social media is not correct and that the state could proceed with the trial even after bail.
Prashant Kanojia was arrested for allegedly making “objectionable comments” against UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on social media. (PTI)Kanojia was arrested Saturday last week for allegedly uploading a video on Twitter in which a woman is heard making some claims about Yogi Adityanath. An FIR was lodged against Kanojia at Lucknow’s Hazratganj police station under Sections 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) and 500 (defamation) of the IPC, and Section 67 of IT Act (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) on a complaint filed by Sub-Inspector Vikas Kumar.
The head of a Noida-based news channel that had broadcast the video shared by Kanojia was arrested, along with one of the editors of the channel. A fourth person named Raju Singh Yadav was arrested Monday morning for allegedly uploading morphed photographs of the CM and the Kanpur-based woman on Facebook.
On Sunday, the Editors Guild of India condemned Kanojia’s arrest, calling it a “brazen misuse of law” and an “effort to intimidate the press and stifle freedom of expression”.
The Opposition too reacted to the arrests sharply, with Congress president Rahul Gandhi saying that if “every journalist who files a false report or peddles fake, vicious RSS/BJP sponsored propaganda about him is put in jail, most newspapers or news channels would face a severe staff shortage”. He also said that Adityanath is behaving foolishly and needs to release the arrested journalists.
