New Delhi: Continuing its vindictive action against journalists, the Assam police on Thursday registered an FIR against Delhi-based journalist Abhisar Sharma under multiple sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), including section 152.

The FIR is based on a complaint filed by a Guwahati resident, one Alok Baruah, over a video where Sharma refers to Guwahati high court judge Justice Sanjay Kumar Medhi’s searing remarks on the Assam government’s tribal land transfer to a private company. Sharma also criticises Assam chief minister Hemant Biswa Sarma in the video, accusing him of relying on communal hate and violence to further his politics.

In the video, posted on Sharma’s YouTube channel on August 18, Sharma says, “When the [chief minister] spreads poison and talks about Hindu-Muslim, it distracts the public from issues like these.”

According to the Indian Express, the complaint against Sharma alleges that the video “contained statements ridiculing and denigrating the duly elected Governments of Assam and the Union of India, stating that the Government survives only on Hindu-Muslim polarisation, thereby provoking communal sentiments, accusing the Chief Minister of communal politics and promoting enmity between different groups on the ground of religion, prejudicial to maintenance of harmony, mocking ridiculing the principle of Ram Rajya, etc.”

“That the article published/circulated by the accused, Mr Abhisar Sharma, is not mere criticism but amounts to an attempt to excite disaffection, provoke public disorder, and endanger the unity and integrity of India by portraying the state as corrupt, communal and illegitimate, thereby committed the offence punishable under section 152 of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita,” the complaint said.

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“The FIR filed against me by [Assam Police] is completely baseless. It will be responded to legally! In my show, I had mentioned the statement of an Assam judge, where he referred to the Assam government giving 3,000 bighas of land to Mahabal Cement and had criticized it. I had also highlighted Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma’s communal politics with facts — based on his own statements,” Sharma wrote on X. 

The Assam Police in its FIR against Sharma has invoked section 152, which is seen as a repackaged version of the sedition law and deals with acts “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.

The action against Sharma comes days after the Assam Police summoned The Wire’s Siddharth Varadarajan and Karan Thapar under multiple sections, including section 152. The FIRs against Sharma, Varadarajan and Thapar have been filed at the Crime Branch police station in Guwahati.

The police have also invoked sections related to promoting enmity between different groups and to imputations and assertions prejudicial to national integrity in the FIR against Sharma.

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