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Journalism of Courage
The family and supporters of Binayak Sen,convicted of sedition,can look at the figures for another man,who arguably holds the record for having been booked and arrested the highest number of times for the same offence: Punjabs IPS officer-turned-pro-Khalistan politician Simranjit Singh Mann.
Since 1984,when he quit his job to join the movement for an independent Sikh state,Mann has been booked over 50 times under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code,which deals with sedition. His lawyer,Ranjan Lakhanpal of the Punjab and Haryana High Court,says he stopped counting once the figure crossed 50.
Each time,either the state has dropped the case of its own or a court has set aside the charge,which carries a maximum punishment of life imprisonment. Now,Mann has just one sedition case pending against him.
Lakhanpal says,The judgment in Binayak Sens case is ridiculous. I am sure the High Court will undo the injustice. I have seen in many cases involving Simranjit Singh Mann,the courts deciding that the offence of sedition (did not hold). And,mind you,unlike Sen,he was accused of raising the demand for Khalistan.
Sometime back,the Supreme Court quashed a sedition case against Mann,which was made out on the basis of slogans raised by Mann eulogising the killers of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.
The Law Commission in its 41st report had favoured amendments to Section 124A. Among various things,it wanted punishment under the offence to be fixed at a maximum seven years and/or a fine. At present,a person convicted under the section can be sentenced to a prison term,either up to three years or for life nothing in between! The Commission was also for changing the definition of what constitutes an offence under Section 124A. However,nothing was done to implement those recommendations.
The controversial clause had been often used by the British to jail leaders in the forefront of independence movement.
Mahatma Gandhi,who once told a British Judge that the section was a prince among the political sections of IPC,designated to suppress the liberty of the citizens,was among those booked for sedition many times; so were other leading lights of the movement.
However,it was the case of Bal Gangadhar Tilak versus Queen-Empress that first made the Indian public and courts aware of the way the contentious clause could be misused. The case,which went right upto the Privy Council,ended in Tilak being held guilty of the offence for writing a piece in his newspaper
Kesari under the heading The misfortune of the country and being sentenced to six years imprisonment.
In independent India,the Supreme Court has upheld the Constitutional validity of the provision on a number of occasions (holding that Section 124A doesnt violate the right to free speech guaranteed by the Constitution) but has also set certain parameters for the offence to be made out.
In the landmark judgment delivered in 1962 in Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar,the Supreme Court Bench headed by then Chief Justice B P Sinha said the charge could be applied only in cases where an individual or group misused their freedom of speech and expression to instigate an armed rebellion against the state.
Keeping in mind the reasons for the introduction of Section 124A and the history of sedition,the section must be so construed as to limit its application to acts involving intention or tendency to create disorder,or disturbance of law and order; or incitement to violence, the SC ruled,in a judgment that still holds the field.
At the same time,it also held that every state,whatever its form of government,has to be armed with the power to punish those who by their conduct jeopardise the safety and stability of the state,or disseminate such feelings of disloyalty as have the tendency to led to the disruption of the state or to public disorder.
