‘Abusing socio-political leader not the same as outraging religious feelings’: HC

A businessman was booked for abusing a Maratha leader, but the Bombay High Court ruled that such insults don't equate to insulting a religion.

MUMBAI: Does abusing a popular socio-political leader amount to insulting their religion? The police in Latur assumed so and booked a businessman in December 2023 for outraging religious feelings after he abused Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil during a drunken brawl. The Bombay High Court, however, held that ‘religious feelings’ were not the same as ‘wounded pride’ or ‘political sentiments’ and set aside the first information report against the businessman.

Maratha quota activist Manoj Jarange-Patil (HT Photo)

“The socio-political figure may be admired or followed by several persons. But criticism or even crude abuses directed upon such figures – however disrespectful or derogatory – may not be translated into an insult to a religion or a deliberate attempt to outrage the religious feelings of a ‘class’ by attacking their religion. A person may represent a religion in certain ways but he/ she does not become the ‘religion’ by such representation,” the Aurangabad bench of justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Hiten Venegavkar said in the order dated September 12.

Drunken brawl

On December 12, 2023, Khayyum Patwari, a 48-year-old businessman, was drinking at a bar in Killari village in Latur district when he got into an argument with a waiter. The argument soon escalated into verbal abuse and insults, and Patwari allegedly abused Manoj Jarange-Patil using words that hurt the religious feelings of Marathas, who are seeking reservation benefits under the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. The struggle for reservation is spearheaded by Jarange-Patil.

Patwari was subsequently arrested but granted bail by a judicial magistrate in Ausa. He then moved the Bombay High Court, contending that the IPC provisions he was booked under were not applicable in the case as the abusive words that he allegedly used were directed at a living person and not at any deity, scripture, doctrine or ritual.

Additional public prosecutor GA Kulkarni argued that since Jarange-Patil was a Maratha leader with several followers, making derogatory remarks against him fell within the meaning of ‘hurting religious sentiments’

The division bench of justices Kankanwadi and Venegavkar, however, held that section 295A of the IPC did not protect leaders of a caste or community. The FIR too did not include references about insult to any religion or religious beliefs of any class, nor did it reflect any deliberate and malicious intention to outrage religious feelings, the court said.

Abusing or using disrespectful words for a socio-political leader, even if he was regarded as a community champion, could not be equated with insulting a faith, the court held.

“The law does protect religious belief from deliberate and strategic spread of false or misleading information or to be abused so as to cause damage in the society, thereby affecting societal peace, law and order situation. However, it definitely does not create a criminal enclave around political leaders or community icons,” the court said, quashing the criminal proceedings against Patwari.