New Delhi: The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Prakash Javadekar, today, clarified that the Central government had not registered any case against 49 eminent personalities who wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister regarding the incidents of mob lynching.
The Minister also said that the case was registered on the directions of the court.
Prakash Javadekar said, “Government has not registered any case. One person approached the court and the court has directed its orders. We haven’t done anything in this regard.”
Forty nine celebrities from different fields had written an open letter dated 23 July to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the cases of mob lynching in the country. They were concerned about the deaths of Muslim and Dalits who became victims of the crime. However, their letter had no reference to cases to mob lynching when the victims were Hindus or when the perpetrators were Muslims.
On 27 July, a Bihar based lawyer, Sudhir Ojha, filed a case in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate against nine people including Konkona Sen and Aparna Sen among others. He alleged that the intellectuals’ letter is a threat to national integrity and intended to malign the image of India.
Ojha also accused them for trying to break the country into pieces in collusion with separatists.
The case was filed under Sections 124a (sedition), 153B (assertions prejudicial to national integrations, 290 (public nuisance), 297 (trespass to wound religious feelings), 504 (intentional insults) of the IPC.
The signatories of the open letter include Shubha Mudgal, Shyam Benegal, Adoor Goplakrishnan, Anurag Kashyap, etc.
The intellectuals and celebrities also demeaned the holy slogan ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and said that it has become a provocative war-cry.
