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No coercive action against Raveena Tandon, Farah Khan in Batala FIR: HC
Raveena Tandon, Farah Khan and Bharti Singh were asked to spell a word and explain its meaning. While Tandon spelt it correctly, Bharti Singh misspelt it, their counsel Abhinav Sood told the HC
The Punjab and Haryana high court has restrained the Punjab Police from taking any coercive steps against actor Raveena Tandon and filmmaker Farah Khan among others in an FIR registered by the Batala police in Gurdaspur on December 30, 2019, on allegations of hurting religious sentiments.
Others roped in as accused were comedian Bharti Singh, screen player writer Abbas Ajij Dalal and a firm, Frames Production Company Private Limited.
They had sought quashing of the FIR registered at the Batala police station against them for allegedly hurting religious sentiments during a web show titled “Backbenchers” released by Flipkart, their counsel Abhinav Sood said.
As per Sood, it was argued that none of the ingredients of the alleged offence under Section 295-A of hurting the religious sentiments is made out and there was no deliberate and malicious intention by anyone to outrage the religious feelings of a class. The allegations are “unjustified, false and incorrect”.
Sood had further informed the court that Tandon, Khan and Bharti Singh were asked to spell a word and explain its meaning. While Tandon spelt it correctly, Bharti Singh misspelt it. It apparently meant that Bharti Singh did not know the word and was referring to another word in Hindi, he had told the court.
“There was nothing that could lead to the presumption that the act was intended to hurt the religious sentiments of a community,” Sood had told the court.
The bench of justice Karamjit Singh while issuing notice to the Punjab police for December 5 has directed that no coercive steps should be taken against the petitioners.
