Tripura High Court refuses to quash case against content creator Madhabi Biswas who mocked PM Modi

The Tripura High Court on Wednesday refused to quash criminal defamation and IT Act charges against content creator Madhabi Biswas Chakraborty over allegedly derogatory posts about the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Agartala's Mayor Dipak Majumdar and deity Mata Tripureshwari [Madhabi Biswas Chakraborty @ Madhavi Biswas Chakraborty @ Moon Moon Biswas vs State of Tripura & ors.].

A Division Bench of Justice T Amarnath Goud and Justice S Datta Purkayastha was hearing two petitions seeking quashing of FIRs registered at East Agartala and West Agartala police stations under Sections 356 of the BNS (defamation) and Section 67 of the Information Technology Act (publishing obscene material online).

The Court held that at the quashing stage, its task is confined to examining whether the FIR and charge-sheet prima facie disclose the ingredients of an offence.

It cannot conduct a mini-trial or assess whether the allegations would ultimately hold up at trial.

It found that the petitioner's statements had prima facie drawn criticism of the Prime Minister and the Mayor by mocking their names, and had hurt religious sentiment connected to Mata Tripureshwari. This was sufficient to constitute defamation and entitle the complainants to sue.

The Bench also noted that the investigation was incomplete, although the investigating officer had seized the petitioner's mobile phone, the underlying video clips or screen recordings could not be retrieved, and further time had been sought to produce them before the trial court.

Since Section 193(9) of the BNSS permits further investigation even after a chargesheet has been filed, the Court held that the police remained free to recover the missing material including from cloud backups or deleted data and file a supplementary charge-sheet if warranted, without needing a fresh direction from the Court.

The Court rejected the argument that free speech under Article 19(1)(a) shielded the petitioner's posts.

Defamation, the Court said, operates as a reasonable restriction under Article 19(2), and that free expression does not license harm to reputation.

It relied on the Supreme Court's rulings in Abhishek Singh v. Ajay Kumar and Somjeet Mallick v. State of Jharkhand to hold that an FIR need not be an exhaustive account of every allegation, and that courts must look at the overall gravamen of the accusations rather than isolated omissions.

The petitioner was arrested by the police and was subsequently granted interim bail by the High Court of Tripura via an order dated January 7, 2026. After the trial court rejected the police's request for her custodial interrogation, she was later granted permanent bail on February 13.

Since the proceedings were only at the stage of the accused's appearance and supply of case documents, the Court held the matters too nascent for quashing and dismissed both petitions.

Senior Advocate P Roy Barman along with advocate T Dhar appeared for the petitioner.

Public Prosecutor Raju Datta appeared for the State.

[Read Judgment]