The Madras High Court on Thursday, February 1, 2024, reserved its judgement on a plea by K. Annamalai, president of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit, to quash a criminal case filed against him for claiming that it was a Christian missionary NGO that had first filed a case before the Supreme Court seeking a ban on the bursting of crackers during Deepavali.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh deferred his verdict after hearing elaborate arguments advanced by the petitioner’s counsel Shyam Sundar, and the complainant’s advocate V. Suresh, for quite a few hours on Wednesday (January 31) and Thursday. Well known environmental activist V. Piyush of Salem had filed the complaint accusing Mr. Annamalai of having made a false claim.
According to the complainant, the false claim was made in an interview given by the BJP State president to a YouTube channel on October 22, 2022 just two days before the Deepavali festival that year. Mr. Piyush said that the interview’s shorter version, running to 6.5 minutes, was also circulated widely on social media through the political party’s X handle.
Stating that it was a senior lawyer’s minor son who had filed the first case against bursting of crackers in the Supreme Court, the complainant accused Mr. Annamalai, a former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, of deliberately fanning communal hatred against Christians by lying that it was a missionary NGO that had filed the first case before the apex court.
“Mr. Annamalai was very clearly and knowingly indulging in promoting disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will between Hindus and Christians and amongst different groups on grounds of religion which was also clearly prejudicial to maintenance of harmony. As a former senior IPS officer himself, the petitioner/accused could not have been ignorant of the provisions of the law regarding hate speech,” he said.
The complainant also said he had lodged a complaint regarding the interview with the Home Secretary, Director General of Police and the Salem Commissioner of Police through e-mail as well as via registered post on October 23, 2022. When this did not evoke any response, he filed a petition before a Magistrate in November 2022 seeking a direction to the Salem police to register a First Information Report.
Subsequently, on December 7, 2022, the Salem cyber crime police informed the complainant that they were closing his complaint since no case had been made out for registration of an FIR. Thereafter, the complainant filed an additional affidavit along with electronic evidence and obtained government sanction, under Section 196 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, in October 2023 to prosecute Mr. Annamalai.
On the other hand, in his quash petition, the BJP State president accused the complainant of having twisted the statements made by him in the interview, to the YouTube channel, with the sole intention of making out the charges under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups) and 505 (public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Stating that the interview was given over a year ago and around 60,000 people had watched it on YouTube, the petitioner said no one from the Christian community had raised any objection so far, and no disturbance to public tranquillity had been reported because of it..
