SC to hear TV anchor's plea to merge multiple FIRs

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court agreed to hear on Thursday a Nupur Sharma-like petition by TV anchor Rohit Ranjan for clubbing of FIRs lodged against him in many states despite tendering an apology and withdrawing a misleading video on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
A day after police teams from Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh engaged in a fracas to arrest the TV anchor, Ranjan through senior advocate Sidharth Luthra on Wednesday sought an urgent hearing on his petition from a bench comprising Justices Indira Banerjee and J K Maheshwari. He said the Raipur police is camping to arrest him and that if not protected he would face multiple arrests for a July 1 TV show which has been withdrawn and for which he and the channel have tendered unconditional apology.
Ranjan's petition banks on the same precedential SC judgments which were relied upon by Sharma - T T Anthony and Satinder Bhasin, both ruling that a person cannot be subjected to multiple FIRs in several states for the same offence and that these can be clubbed at the place where first FIR is lodged. In Ranjan's case, the first FIR was lodged at Jaipur and he seeks clubbing of all FIRs there.
Sharma too had faced multiple FIRs across India for her allegedly blasphemous comments against Prophet Muhammad. But, her plea for clubbing of FIRs at Delhi, where it was lodged on May 28, had invited a barrage of questions from a bench of Justices Surya Kant and J B Pardiwala, the latter linking the comments to the murder of a tailor in Udaipur by two Muslims who took offence to his support for Sharma.
After hearing Luthra, the bench of Justices Banerjee and Maheshwari said, "List (the petition for hearing) on July 7, subject to curing of defects, if any. Ranjan in his petition said he is moving the SC under Article 32 of the Constitution "praying for quashing/clubbing of almost identical criminal complaints/FIRs filed across the country against him". He also pleaded for a stay of his arrest by any state police.
In his petition filed through Karanjawala & Co solicitors, the TV anchor said his show "inadvertently mis-attributed certain quotes and the error was immediately rectified." It will be interesting to watch the decision of the SC in this case, given its comments against Sharma last week.