Telangana HC orders suspended BJP MLA Raja Singh’s release after 76 days on conditions

After hearing the arguments of advocate-general B S Prasad and counter-arguments of senior counsel L Ravichander, the court ordered Singh’s release. Advocate-on-record K Karuna Sagar, who represented Raja Singh, said the MLA was released “on conditions that he would not take out a victory rally on his release, address the media or post any derogatory or inflammatory speech on social media”.

Ravichander, who represented Sagar, argued that the invocation of the Act against the MLA was politically motivated. The advocate-general argued that it was a fit case for preventive detention as there were a huge number of cases against Singh.

Singh, according to the Hyderabad police, has been involved in 101 criminal cases and 18 of these are related to communal offences. Police had said Singh was “habitually delivering provocative and inflammatory speeches” and “driving a wedge between communities leading to public disorder”.

“The whole argument is about Singh saying something about ‘Aka’. We contend that ‘Aka’ does not mean Prophet. And the government could not have relied upon a fatwa that said ‘Aka’ can mean Prophet. Secondly, every law and order problem cannot be a public order problem. The Supreme Court has said the normal criminal law of land is enough to deal with hate speech and therefore conduct a trial and put him in jail and not under preventive detention,” the senior counsel told indianexpress.com.

Stating that half of the documents shared by police in the case were not legible, the senior counsel said it was a “colourable exercise of power” and that “after the remand was rejected by the magistrate, they wanted to avenge him and therefore he was put in jail”.

Hours after Singh released the video on the night of August 22, thousands hit the streets demanding his immediate arrest. While they argued that the video contained derogatory remarks against Prophet Mohammed, in a video shared on YouTube by Singh, the MLA claimed that he had not named anybody and was only responding to Faruqui’s show. The show was held with police protection after Singh called for disrupting it saying the comic’s earlier remarks had hurt Hindu sentiments.

On October 10, Singh replied to a showcause notice issued to him by member secretary of the BJP’s central disciplinary committee, Om Pathak, on August 23 for his comments. In his reply, Singh said he did not violate the BJP’s constitution, and defended the video he posted on social media.

“I made a video to make people understand how Munawar Faruqui does his show. I neither belittled any relgion nor did I criticise the gods of any religions in my video. I did not use abusive or harsh language. I didn’t mention the name of any individual in my video. I didn’t deliberately hurt the sentiments of any religion. As directed by the MIM, the TRS government filed a false case against me intentionally. I have been detained in jail by invoking the PD Act. In my video, I only imitated Munawar Faruqui, that too, based on information provided on Google. I neither hurt any religion’s sentiments nor criticised any religion. Hence, I believe that I have not violated Rule XXV 10(a) of the constitution of BJP as mentioned in the disciplinary notice,” he said in his reply. The BJP has not yet responded to this.

(With inputs from Sreenivas Janyala)