Disha Ravi’s bail order a shot in the arm for those engaging in legitimate dissent against govt

Climate activist Disha Ravi, who was charged by the Delhi Police of sedition among other sections of the Indian Penal Code and placed in custody for nine days, has exposed the true colour of our law and order machinery. While slapping sedition charges, the police had projected Disha as being ‘anti-national’.

But the Delhi court which granted her bail exposed a number of holes in the conspiracy theory of the police. In its design to showcase her arrest as the catch of the decade, the Delhi Police did not even deter from violating the fundamentals of the legal provisions.

According to the prevailing legal practices, the Delhi Police should have produced Disha, who was arrested from her residence in Bengaluru, before a local court and sought a transit remand. Instead, it whisked her to Delhi. Usually, such tactics are adopted by the police in the case of high-risk criminals. Obviously, through its action, the Delhi Police wanted to project her as a high-risk criminal too.

That the Delhi Police treated her like a hardened criminal was manifest from its denial to provide her basic needs like food and winter clothing while bringing her to Delhi after the arrest, and its chief’s observation that age was not a factor to judge the nature of the crime.

The police across the country has a penchant for implicating civil rights activists, social activists and academics in sedition cases just for dissent. Some 7,136 people have been charged under the sedition law since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014.

A relic of the British colonial government once used against Mahatma Gandhi, India’s 19th-century sedition statute gives police broad powers to make arrests ahead of filing formal charges if an act or speech by an individual is “regarded to be disloyal to or threatening to the state.” The maximum penalty can be a life term in prison.

What is quite interesting is that baring ten cases, the police could not substantiate its charges against arrested persons. Only 10 people have been convicted under the law in the five years to 2019, according to data presented to Parliament.

But then, for the government, the real use of the law is the ability to deny bail and keep people locked up for years while their cases trudge through the court system.

Much of this has gone unchallenged. The civil service and the police act more as political extensions of the government rather than constitutional functionaries. Much of India’s press has already been compromised, exhibiting complicity and subservience to the government.

While granting bail to Disha Ravi, the court held that 'Not even an iota of evidence was brought to notice'. The bail order demolishes almost every charge levelled against her. The court added: “Considering the scanty and sketchy evidence available on record, I do not find any palpable reasons to breach the general rule of ‘bail’ against a 22-year-old young lady, with absolutely blemish-free criminal antecedents and having firm roots in the society, and send her to jail”.

The judgement is quite significant for the reason that it demolishes the police efforts to slap false and fabricated cases against dissenters, the people who dare to put their views in public domain and question the rationale behind government’s actions and policies.

The judge, citing a 1942 verdict, said: “The offence of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of governments.” The order clearly implied that sedition cannot come into play without incitement to violence.

The police had alleged that Disha was associated with a pro-Khalistani secessionist group, Poetic Justice Foundation (PJF), and that people associated with it were directly linked with the creation of the ‘toolkit’ document. Disha’s associates Nikita and Shantanu attended a Zoom meeting with 60­70 people from across the world, including Mo Dhaliwal and Anita Lal, it said. But the police could not provide any proof to justify its allegations.

The attempt of the Delhi Police to connect Disha with the violence that took place near Red Fort on January 26 proved to be a futile effort. The police could not provide any evidence connecting Disha with the actual perpetrators of the violence.

The perusal of the said ‘toolkit’ reveals that any call for any kind of violence was conspicuously absent. The police had alleged that the ‘toolkit’ has embedded hyperlinks with the intent to malign India abroad. However the court did not find anything objectionable.

The court through its observations and grant of bail to Disha Ravi has raised the bar for the State to initiate prosecution for being part of a “larger conspiracy”. This is significant given that this charge is now recurrently levied in cases related to legitimate protests.

The court said: “Any person with dubious credentials may interact with a number of persons during the course of his social intercourse. As long as the engagement/interaction remains within the four corners of law, people interacting with such persons, ignorantly, innocently or for that matter even fully conscious of their dubious credentials, cannot be painted with the same hue”.

(IPA Service)

(Views expressed are personal)