The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday stayed the arrest of former AAP leader and poet Kumar Vishwas in the FIR registered against him by the Punjab Police for allegedly giving inflammatory statements against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, among other charges, officials said. Last week, Vishwas had moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court seeking to quash the FIR registered against him. Vishwas had been booked by the police at Rupnagar on April 12 under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, criminal conspiracy, publishing or circulating news with intent to create enmity on the grounds of religion or race, besides under the Representation of People Act on a complaint by Narinder Singh, the police had said earlier. In his petition seeking to quash the FIR, Vishwas had submitted that after the recent Punjab Vidhan Sabha elections, the AAP came into power with a thumping majority and immediately thereafter a series of complaints and FIRs were registered against its political opponents on the basis of some old tweets and statements in a bid to harass them. The petition had added that the registration of the FIR was illegal, arbitrary and unjust, and was nothing but a means to wreak vengeance through politically motivated criminal investigation using the state machinery.
