Chhattisgarh High Court quashes FIR against BJP leaders Raman Singh, Sambit Patra booked for tweet alleging Congress toolkit

The Chhattisgarh High Court on Wednesday quashed a criminal case against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Raman Singh and Sambit Patra booked by the Chhattisgarh Police for spreading fake news by tweeting about an alleged 'Congress Toolkit' during the COVID-19 pandemic [Dr Raman Singh vs State of Chhattisgarh and ors]. .A bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice NK Chandravanshi stated that no offence had been made out and rather the acts of tweeting political gossip had been targeted by the State."In the instant cases, posting/tweeting a message which is more in the form of a political gossip, has been tried to given a shape of an act of spreading fake news and inciting of violence. This Court cannot permit the same to be proceeded with. The respondent has tried to rope the petitioners as well as one Union Minister and other functionaries of the BJP on a petty political ideological tussle, which shows the malafide on the part of the said respondent as after lodging of the FIR," the bench noted..On May 18, 2021, the petitioner were informed of a document allegedly prepared by the Indian National Congress party, titled "Cornering Narendra Modi & BJP on COVID Mismanagement”. The same had instructions on how to tarnish the image of the Central government and the BJP. The petitioners had tweeted about the same with the hashtag 'Congress Toolkit'. A Congress student wing leader then filed a first information report (FIR) against Singh and Patra alleging that they forged letter heads of the party in the images they shared in the tweets in question to portray fake news.The two leaders were booked for offences punishable under Sections 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant), 469 (forgery), 504 (intentional insult to provoke), 505(1)(b) [insult likely to induce any person to commit offence against State or against public tranquility], and 505(1)(c) [incitement of a class or community of persons] of the Indian Penal Code.This led to the present pleas for quashing the FIR..The High Court at the outset noted that no order duly promulgated by a public servant has been disobeyed by the petitioners. Likewise, there was no proof that the petitioners had themselves prepared the false letterhead in question. They had relied on a document already available in public. "No part of the aforesaid message/ tweet has any tendency to create disorder or disturbance of public peace by resort to violence and till date, no such violence or disturbance of public peace and tranquility has been reported due to the Petitioner's tweet/ message and as such, no case under Section 505(1)(b) and (c) is made out against the petitioners."Pertinently, the Court questioned the haste shown by the police in registering the FIR."It is apparent that the complaint was received at the police station at 4.05 p.m. on 19.05 2021, and immediately within one minute i.e. at 4:06 p.m., the FIR was registered. How the police authorities reached to the conclusion in a minute that the said complaint makes out a cognizable offence against the petitioners. The haste shown by the police authorities is also beyond understanding," the Court said.The bench added that the FIR should have been filed against the first person who tweeted the allegedly false message. "The petitioners under a bonafide belief considering it to be a genuine message, forwarded/retweeted the same from their social media account which was already in the public domain.".The appeals were, thus, allowed, without costs and the FIR against the two BJP leaders was quashed..Senior Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani and advocates Vivek Sharma, Apoorv Kurup, Gary Mukhopadhyay, Ayushi Agrawal, Abhishek Gupta, Ravi Sharma and Neeraj Jain appeared for Singh and Patra.Advocate General SC Verma and Additional Advocate General Chandresh Shrivastava represented the Chhattisgarh government..[Read Judgment]