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Journalism of Courage
Criminal law cannot be allowed to be made a tool of harassment of innocent persons on the basis of completely incredulous material, the Supreme Court said Friday as it quashed FIRs against Rajendra Bihari Lal, Vice-Chancellor of Utar Pradesh’s Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (SHUATS), and others for alleged religious conversions to Christianity.
A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Manoj Misra quashed five FIRs registered under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021. Regarding one of the FIRs, the court noted that it was lodged at the instance of a VHP leader with respect to an alleged mass conversion event at Fatehpur in April 2022. Quashing it, Justice Pardiwala, writing for the bench, agreed with the argument that as per Section 4 of the unamended Act, the complaint may be set in motion only at the behest of the aggrieved individual or an immediate family member.
“…To permit the initiation of criminal proceedings at the instance of strangers or unrelated third parties would amount to an impermissible intrusion into this protected sphere of individual freedom and would open the door to frivolous or motivated litigations, thereby diluting the constitutional guarantees of personal liberty and freedom of religion,” the court said.
The bench said that the SC had in its 1977 judgment “in ‘Rev. Stanislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors’ clarified that while the right to propagate religion is protected under Article 25, it does not extend to conversions brought about by force or fraud. The statutory limitation on who may initiate proceedings, therefore, strikes a balance by ensuring that genuine grievances of those subjected to unlawful conversion are redressed, while simultaneously safeguarding the autonomy, dignity, and liberty of individuals from unwarranted intrusion and misuse of criminal process under the pretext of protecting religious freedom by persons masquerading as custodians of religion prodded by oblique motivations.”
Quashing two other FIRs, the court said they were in respect of the same alleged incident and appeared identical. It said that in the case of Arnab Goswami, the SC had held that “any information relating to the same cognizable offence, the same occurrence, or the incident giving rise to one or more cognizable offences, cannot be treated as a fresh first information report and is barred. Except in cases where the test of sameness is inapplicable or where a counter-case arises, registration of a subsequent FIR would amount to an abuse of the investigative process…”
Regarding another FIR, the SC said, “It was not open to the police to overcome the difficulty by getting persons with vested interests to make complaints regarding the same alleged incident after a considerable delay and thereafter initiate a fresh round of investigation against largely the same set of accused persons.”
The court rejected the argument that a writ petition under Article 32 seeking quashing of the FIR is not maintainable and said it “is maintainable as held in a catena of decisions of this Court”.
“This court, as the highest constitutional court, has been conferred with the powers as enshrined under Part III of the Constitution to provide remedies against the violation of fundamental rights. The very fact that the right to constitutional remedies has itself been enshrined as a fundamental right is a clear affirmation that this court is the ultimate guarantor of their enforcement,” it said. It, however, directed that a sixth FIR be detagged from the remaining five given that the offences therein included firing of a shot using a firearm with intention to kill and demand of money by use of criminal force.
The court said the matter requires further consideration by it and directed that the interim protection granted to the accused by it shall continue until the matter is finally heard and decided.
