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IN THE HIGH COURT OF BOMBAY
Das T.K. Chandrashekhara, J.
Aroon Purie .... Petitioner.
Versus
H.L. Varma another.... Respondents.
Criminal Writ Petition No. 1053 of 1991, decided on 30-9-1998.
Advocates appeared :
S.V. Marwadi Manmohan Sarin, for petitioner.
Mrs. Jyoti S. Pawar, A.P.P., for State.
Held, that no offence under Section 153 was made out. In order to come within the ambit of Section 153, IPC apart from the malignant or derogatory remarks published, that act must he an Illegal act. The presiding over a debate and publication of the speeches cannot be considered to be an illegal act. The Magistrate ought not to have issued Summons against the petitioner when an offence was not disclosed even on the basis of the averment made in the complaint. Writ petition allowed. Order quashed.
Section 153-Offence under - Presiding over debate on subject of secularism and its publication in good- faith-Whether illegal acts - Held, No.-It is argued but the counsel for the petitioner that an act in order to fall within the ambit of Section 153 the act must be done malignantly to provoke any person to cause riot. Apart from that the act must be illegal. In other words in order to attract the provisions of Section 153 three important ingredients have to be present.
1.The act must be illegal.
2.Such illegal act must be malignantly done, and
3.As a result of such illegal act, there must be a situation which may cause riot,
when on the allegation contained in the complaint it is seen that the act done by the petitioner was only to preside over the debate and to publish the matter. According to me there is substance in the contention of Mr. Vakil. Presiding over a debate on a subject of secularism cannot be said to be an illegal act. The true publication of the speeches made in the debate also cannot be said to be an illegal act. An editor who does publish in good-faith, truly publishes the speeches made in the debate however cannot be said to have done an illegal act. It may be that any remarks made by any speaker may hurt the sentiment of others and will not come within the ambit of Section 153 of IPC even through such remarks might result in defamation. However that is not the allegation contained in the complaint.
2. The complainant before the Magistrate is a practising Advocate in Bombay. It is alleged in the complaint that he is worshipper of Chhatrapati Shivaji, who was considered as an incarnation of God, sent to the earth to preserve, protect and propagate the sanatan Hindu Dharma. It is alleged that the magazine India Today had organised a debate on the subject of 'secularlism' in 1991. In the said debate prominent personalities of different walks of life like M/s. M.J. Akbar, Bipin Chandra, Sitaram Yechuri, Jawed Habeeb, Swapan Dasgupta, Girilal Jain, Arun Jaitely, Ashish Nandy, Kushwant Singh, Jaswant Singh were participated. Petitioner Aroon Purie who had chaired the said debate in which each of the participants expressed their views about the subject 'securalism'. In the course of debate accused No. 3 Mr. Kushwant Singh made following remarks, allegedly derogatory.
"India is secular, Advani says, because of the Hindus, all right, I am willing to concede that if the muslims had been the same number as the Hindus are they would have declared it in Islamic State. But our pride is that we are a secular State, despite it being over 80 percent Hindu.
It is Hindus like Gandhi and Nehru who did it not Hindus like these. They are fanatics, narrow-minded with no vision of the future in this Court. Anyone who is a anti-Muslim is their heroes-Rana Pratap, Prithviraj Chauhan, Guru Govind Singh, Shivaji they all fought Muslims. They are the National heroes. Well, there is obviously some distortion in our history. You have the Shivaji-Afzal khan episode. Quite obiviously Shivaji behaved like a bastard, he murdered a man who was embracing him, stories that he plunged a dagger into Shivaji are all made up, we have to move away from all, this."
3. Accordingly to the petitioner, the aforesaid, remarks made by Mr. Khushwant Singh accused No. 3 has committed an offence under section 153 of the Indian Penal Code and the remarks made by the speakers in the debate had featured in the issue of ' India Today' published on 15-5-1991 titled as 'Cross Fire'. Admittedly, the petitioner was only presiding over the debate and according to him he was only publishing the speech made by different speakers who expressed different opinions about the 'secularlism'. It is averred in the petition that the remarks made by Kushwant Singh about Chhatrapathi Shivaji create a wave of opposition among the protagonist of Shivaji. In view of this Khushwant Singh had made a public apology.
4. I heard the senior Counsel of the petitioner Shri P.R. Vakil and Mrs. Jyoti S. Pawar, A.P.P. for the State. Shri Vakil submits that no offence has been committed by the petitioner as he was only presiding over the debate and was only a passive listener of the speeches and India Today carried only the true reports of the speeches made in the debate. According to the Counsel this conduct of the petitioner however will not amount to any offence coming within the ambit of section 153, Indian Penal Code.
5. The second contention of the learned Counsel for the petitioner is that the debate was conducted in New Delhi and India Today published in New Delhi and the seat of the Editor is also at New Delhi. Therefore the learned Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, at Dadar, Bombay has no jurisdiction to entertain the complaint as the offence is not alleged to have been committed within the territorial jurisdiction of the Magistrate.
6. I have examined the contentions of the learned Counsel for the petitioner. In order to appreciate the contention of the petitioner we have to refer se
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