Even after Supreme court’s guideline the sedition law has become a weapon to muzzle dissent

The Supreme Court has laid down guidelines to prevent abuse of the law, but they are often ignored.

A week is fast becoming a long time without a sedition case being slapped on one pretext or another on Indian citizens. It is a rising trend. Although the sedition law, Section 124A, is an archaic one enshrined in the antiquated Indian Penal Code (IPC), the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) began recording data on this only in 2014.

According to the NCRB, 35 cases were registered under Section 124A in 2016, rising to 70 in 2018. The abysmally low conviction rate in such cases suggests that the police are at their wits’ end marshalling evidence against individuals facing sedition charges. They have managed conviction in only four of the 43 cases where the trial has been completed in the past five years. While none of the four cases in which trial was completed in 2015 ended in a conviction, the lowest conviction rate in this five-year period was 15.4 per cent (in 2018). In 2016, it was 16.7 per cent and 33.3 per cent in 2017.

However, no case has sparked off so much outrage as the one against Bengaluru journalism student Amulya Leona Noronha, 19, for raising ‘Pakistan Zindabad (Hail Pakistan)’ slogans. Charged with sedition, which can attract a maximum punishment of life imprisonment, Noronha was sent to judicial remand for two weeks for the sloganeering at a protest held against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act in Bengaluru on February 20.

Karnataka authorities have, in recent weeks, gained notoriety for slapping sedition cases recklessly, not sparing even school students. In Noronha’s case, Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa even declared that her links with Maoists needed to be probed. The irony is, over several decades since Independence, firebrand left-wing extremists who spoke of power coming from the barrel of the gun, armed revolt against the government and planning to overthrow the State were seldom brought to book, leave alone being convicted of sedition.ADVERTISEMENT

“Neither the sedition law, much less any other criminal provision, would apply if a citizen chanted ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ since India was neither at war with Pakistan nor had it been declared an enemy country. Not only sedition, no criminal law provision appears in her (Noronha’s) case,” says retired Supreme Court judge B. Sudarshan Reddy.

Rubbishing the charges against Noronha, Justice Reddy adds: “This is totally unacceptable. Liberal constitutional democracy is in peril. The time has come for the judiciary to step in and counter this trend.”

Clearly, the college student’s ordeal is emerging as a poignant case of abuse of the sedition law. Calling the provision of sedition as “impermissibly vague”, Kunal Ambasta, faculty member at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, explains: “In criminal law, it is a basic principle that the provisions must be clear and the words used definite. This is to ensure certainty in the application of the law. By reading the provision, a person should be able to tell the acts that the provision prohibits. In the case of sedition, one can never say what this means. In criminal law, where the consequences of a criminal allegation are severe, uncertainty itself is abuse of process.”

Trying to curtail the misuse of this provision, the Supreme Court has held that the need to invoke sedition must arise if an alleged act incites violence or can result in violence. While dealing with offences under Section 124A of the IPC, a five-judge Supreme Court constitutional bench had, in the Kedar Nath Singh vs State of Bihar case (1962), laid down some guiding principles. The court ruled that comments-however strongly worded-expressing disapprobation of the actions of the government without causing public disorder by acts of violence would not be penal. These guidelines, though, appear to be often ignored.

The much-cited verdict states that a citizen has a right to say or write whatever she dislikes about the government, or its measures, by way of criticism or comment, so long as she does not incite people to violence against the government established by law or with the intention of creating public disorder.

However, the judgment does not provide guidelines for pre-arrest requirements and compliances. Any person arrested for sedition will have to obtain bail, attend proceedings, make herself present for investigation before the charge-sheet is filed or until the case is closed.

In the Balwant Singh vs State of Punjab (1995) case, the Supreme Court had clarified that merely shouting slogans, in this case Khalistan Zindabad, does not amount to sedition. Evidently, the sedition law is being both misunderstood and misused to muzzle dissent.ADVERTISEMENT

What then is the way out of this cloak-and-dagger game that abuses the process of law and infringes on citizens’ right to life and personal liberty? The Supreme Court has before it a petition by activist Yogita Bhayana, asking it to issue an order directing the Centre to constitute a committee to scrutinise sedition complaints and adhere to judgments by the apex court before registering an FIR under Section 124A.

Justice Reddy says sometimes courts should take up matters suo moto. “Except people freely expressing their opinion and timely intervention by the courts, what else can be done?” he wonders.