[Tripura violence] Supreme Court agrees to hear plea by journalist Shyam Meera Singh, others booked under UAPA

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a petition challenging the Tripura Police's decision to invoke the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against several Supreme Court lawyers, activists and journalist Shyam Meera Singh.

. Advocate Prashant Bhushan mentioned the plea before a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana this morning.

When the CJI suggested that the plea can be filed before the appropriate High Court, Bhushan urged the Bench to hear the matter considering the urgency involved. The CJI then acceded to the request and agreed to list the matter for hearing.

. Recently, the Tripura Police had booked journalist Singh and certain other activists for offences punishable under the UAPA.

Thereafter, they moved the Supreme Court seeking to quash the first information report (FIR) registered against them. According to Singh, the BJP-led Tripura Government had slapped UAPA charges against him for his tweet which said, "Tripura is burning."

. The plea sought to quash the First Information Reports (FIRs) registered against the petitioners and all subsequent and consequential proceedings arising from the FIRs as, " violative of the freedom of speech & expression of the petitioners protected under article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India; malafide; abuse of process of law; and as the FIR prima facie discloses no cognizable offences. "

. The constitutional validity of Section 2(o) (Definition of ‘Unlawful Activity’) read with Section 13 (Punishment for Unlawful Activities) and Section 43(d)(5) of the UAPA have also been challenged as being inconsistent with the fundamental rights of the petitioners under Articles 14, 19(1)(a), & 21 of the Constitution of India.

. According to the petitioners, the FIR is ex facie an attempt to curb the free flow of information from the riot affected areas and is a counter blast to scuttle their rights to freedom of speech and expression.

"If the quest for truth and reporting thereof itself is criminalized then the victim in the process is the idea of justice," the petition said.

. Moreover, it was argued that even a bare reading of the FIR shows nothing that can attract the provisions of the UAPA as it contains no trace of evidence of supporting any secessional activity, questions the sovereignty or territorial integrity of India, or causes any disaffection against the State of India.

" Invocation of Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, is a colorful exercise of power knowing full well the statutory bars on grant of anticipatory bail and the remote possibility of securing regular bail by virtue of Section 43(d)(4) & Section 43(d)(5) of the act of 1967, " the plea said.

. The petitioners placed reliance on the decisions of the Supreme Court including Vijay Sekhar v Union of India and Vinod Dua v. Union of India in which the Court had quashed FIRs in exercise of its jurisdiction under Article 32 when freedom of speech and expression of a citizen was at stake.

. For similar "provocative posts", UAPA notices were also sent to Supreme Court lawyers Ehtesham Hashmi, Amit Srivastava, Ansar Indori and Mukesh Kumar. The four lawyers had conducted a fact finding enquiry into the communal violence in the State before putting their findings on social media.

It was claimed that they had travelled from Delhi to Tripura and were there between October 30, 2021 and November 1, 2021. During this visit, the team purportedly interacted with various persons affected by the targeted violence, visited sites affected by the violence, and met some officials of the district administration as well.

Upon their return to Delhi, the fact finding report titled, “Humanity Under Attack in Tripura #Muslim Lives Matter”, was put in the public domain by Lawyers for Democracy in a press conference

. The Tripura Police also allegedly booked over a hundred other social media users under UAPA, criminal conspiracy and forgery charges and served notices to the authorities of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to freeze such accounts and to furnish all particulars of the account holders.

. This came in the wake of the social media outrage that followed after reports surfaced claiming that mosques and shops and houses belonging to Muslims were vandalised. These incidents were reported to have occurred during the rallies by groups protesting the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh during and after Durga Puja in October.

The police have, however, refuted the claims and maintained that social media users had widely exaggerated the events and that the situation was controlled swiftly by security forces.

Meanwhile, the Editors Guild of India condemned the actions of the police in invoking such stringent laws to suppress news coverage of incidents of communal violence.

[Tripura violence] Supreme Court agrees to hear plea by journalist Shyam Meera Singh, others booked under UAPA

Debayan Roy

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