Peaceful processions, raising slogans not offence under Constitution: Himachal Pradesh HC
Holding peaceful processions, raising slogans, would not be and cannot be an offence under India’s Constitution, the Himachal Pradesh High Court has ruled quashing a First Information Report (FIR) against an advocate.
Shimla West police station registered an FIR against advocate Anu Tuli Azta charging her with wrongful restraint, forming unlawful assembly, rioting, indulging in criminal force to deter public servants from discharging their duties, intentional insult to breach the peace, and criminal intimidation.
Azta is a member of the Shimla District Courts Bar Association and it was argued on her behalf that lawyers were protesting peacefully against restriction of entry to the District Court complex Shimla from a shorter route, forcing them to take a longer way, which witnessed traffic jams, resulting in a delay in attending to the Courts.
The police had claimed in the FIR that when officer reached the spot to clear the road blocked by the protesting lawyers, the latter abused the police, threatened to burn down the police station and told the station officer that they would teach him a lesson he would never forget in his life. Azta was also named in the FIR.
Justice Anoop Chitkara, hearing the case, observed, “Even if the Court presumes that the petitioner was present at the spot, it will still not be an automatic, inference of her acting with a common object with those who had inflicted fist blows, hurled abuses and threatened the SHO and also threatened to bur the police station.
The judge observed that the police could not point out in which frames of the video produced in the court, was the “petitioner was video recorded inflicting fist blows, hurling abuses, threatening the SHO or threatening to burn the police station”.
“Even if the Court believes all the allegations in the FIR as truthful, still there is no allegation against the petitioner of participating in any criminal act. Mere presence at the spot in the demonstration would not invite criminal act in the facts and nature of allegations made in the present FIR,” the judge observed.
The judge then quashed the FIR and consequential proceedings were quashed.