The Supreme Court of India has declined to immediately issue a notice in a petition challenging the dismissal of a case related to chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ in a mosque. The court instructed the petitioner, Haider Ali, to provide a copy of his petition to the Karnataka Government and stated that it would hear the matter in January after obtaining the state’s response.
The incident took place in Kadaba Taluka of Dakshina Kannada district, Karnataka, where the local court had earlier dismissed the case involving two individuals, Keertan Kumar and Sachin Kumar, accused of entering the mosque and chanting the religious slogan. The case was dismissed by the High Court on September 13, with the bench led by Justice Nagprasanna stating that the communal harmony in the area was stable and that the slogan chanting could not be deemed as an insult to another religion.
During the proceedings, senior advocate Devdutt Kamat, representing Haider Ali, argued that the actions of the accused amounted to forcible entry and intimidation at a religious site of another faith, thereby attempting to disrupt communal harmony. Kamat criticized the misuse of Section 482 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), under which the High Court had quashed the FIR before the investigation was completed.
The Supreme Court bench, comprising Justices Pankaj Mithal and Sandeep Mehta, questioned how the chanting of religious slogans could be considered a criminal offense. They emphasized the need to examine the evidence against the accused and the arguments presented by the police during the request for remand in the lower court.
The High Court had ruled that the communal harmony in the region was intact and that a few slogans by two individuals did not constitute a denigration of another religion, leading to the cancellation of the FIR filed under IPC sections 447, 295A, and 506, which pertain to illegal entry, deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings, and criminal intimidation, respectively.
