Supreme Court Issues Notice On Plea Challenging Section 152 BNS; The Wire Gets Interim Relief
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday (August 12) granted protection from “coercive action” against The Wire Editor Siddharth Varadarajan in connection with the First Information Report (FIR) registered by the Assam Police.
The case was filed against him over an article published in The Wire on Operation Sindoor. It was registered at Morigaon police station on July 11 under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which deals with the “act endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.”
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A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Joymalya Bagchi passed the interim order on the PIL filed filed by the Foundation for Independent Journalism, which runs the web portal The Wire, and Varadarajan challenging the constitutionality of the legal provision.
In the court, petitioners stated that the law was a repackaged version of the colonial sedition law. The bench issued a notice to the Central government and State of Assam on the plea which also challenged the validity of the Section 152 of BNS. The Court has also tagged the matter with a similar petition that questions the constitutional standing of Section 152, where a notice was issued on August 8.
In May 2022, a three judge Supreme Court bench led by then CJI N V Ramana ordered a pause on all sedition cases under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The petitioners have argued before the apex court that the Centre has reintroduced the same sedition law under a new name, Section 152 of the BNS.
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“After grossly abusing the Sedition provision of BNS against Mohammed Zubair last year, the same provision (Sec 152) has been wrongly invoked against @thewire_in and me by the Assam police for a factual story about the Indian military attache’s comments on Op. Sindoor—a story that was widely reported in over a dozen news platforms. The FIR—filed on the basis of a complaint by a BJP officeholder— was kept secret and we heard from well-placed sources that it was going to be used to effect a ‘midnight arrest,” Varadarajan said in a Facebook post.
The article titled “IAF Lost Fighter Jets to Pak Because of Political Leadership’s Constraints’: Indian Defence Attache” was published on June 29.
