New Delhi: Delhi’s Saket Metropolitan Court on May 17, while hearing a petition filed by journalist Qurban Ali, sought the action taken report (ATR) from Delhi’s Hazrat Nizamuddin Police Station regarding a complaint of hate speech against Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ordering that the ATR be furnished on June 5, the court asked the concerned officers to specify what action was taken by the police if they had lodged Ali’s complaint.
The Court also asked the police authorities to specify whether they conducted any inquiry on the complaint filed by Ali, whether the officers found any cognizable offence committed as part of the inquiry and if so, whether a First Information Report (FIR) has been registered by the police against Modi on this matter.
Qurban Ali, a senior journalist who has four decades of experience in the field, has been filing cases in courts on matters of public interest including hate speech. On April 23, Ali approached his local police station in New Delhi to register an FIR against the prime minister for making communal and inflammatory remarks about Muslims at an election rally on April 21 at Banswara, Rajasthan.
In his speech that day, Modi had said – falsely – that the Congress had promised to survey people’s property and that they would distribute “our sisters’ gold” to others.
“When they were in government earlier, they had said that Muslims had the first right to the nation’s property. This means they will collect this property and distribute it to whom? To those who have more children. To infiltrators,” Modi said during his April 21 speech at Banswara.
In Ali’s original petition to the Hazrat Nizamuddin Police Station – which The Wire accessed – he said that this speech by the prime minister was in violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), which expressly prohibits creating enmity between communities during election rallies.
In fact, the very first point mentioned in the MCC is that no party or candidate “shall include in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic.”
“The fact that [Modi’s] speech contains inflammatory, false, and prejudicial comments against the Indian Muslim community is being widely circulated online in addition to being broadcasted on national television is an immediate cause of concern for the constitutional principles of our country particularly those enshrined in the ideas of fraternity and secularism,” Ali’s letter to the Hazrat Nizamuddin SHO to lodge the FIR read.
However, when Ali approached the station to lodge the FIR, he found no action was being taken.
“They [the police] didn’t refuse but they said they will take some time,” Ali told The Wire on May 19. “But for the next two-three days nothing happened.”
After the police did not register his FIR, Ali moved the Saket Court under Section 156 (3) of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) which provides that a magistrate can order the police to conduct an investigation of a cognizable offence.
“The prime minister is so viciously campaigning against Muslims saying they are infiltrators and more,” Ali told The Wire. “So he is not only violating the Peoples’ Representation Act 1951, but also trying to make all these statements which will cause hatred. There cannot be an atmosphere of hatred among communities and that is the basic requirement of our Constitution. It has been said in the preamble of the Constitution that we the people of India will do everything for fraternity and brotherhood, and promote this. On the contrary, the head of the state, the prime minister, is himself violating this just to win the election. That was my primary concern.”
The Saket court has ordered the Hazrat Nizamuddin police station to furnish the ATR on June 5.
