Judiciary ensures remarks against minorities not taken kindly

SC on Monday took exception to certain scurrilous statements made against minority religions in the PIL fi led by BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay, who's facing a hate speech case

NT Correspondent

New Delhi: The Supreme Court (SC) has asked that certain allegations made against minority religions in the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) against alleged mass conversions be removed.

The bench comprising Justices MR Shah and Ravindra Bhat conceded that the remarks had been “scurrilous” when senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for certain Christian groups raised an objection, reports LiveLaw.

“Certain averments that some religions are perpetuating rapes and others crimes have been made by the petitioner in his affidavit from paragraph 20 onwards. These should be withdrawn. It cannot be before your Lordships,” Dave submitted.

Justice Bhat told Arvind Datar who was appearing for petitioner BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay, “Mr Datar, please consider what are these allegations. These allegations being made, you consider it and moderate this. You should not have all these on record.” “If it is a scurrilous remark or a bad remark, they will be removed,” Datar responded. “Please do that,” Justice Bhat said.

“You look into it. You personally look into it,” Justice Shah put in. “Para 20 onwards they say. I will see it again,” Datar added. Further, the bench has adjourned the hearing to January 9. Notably, Justice CT Ravikumar had been replaced by Ravindra Bhat after an earlier hearing.

Hate speech case against petitioner Dave at the very beginning questioned the credibility of the petitioner who had filed similar PILs in the past, which had been dismissed, adding that there was a past hate speech case against the petitioner Upadhyay.

Dave also claimed that the petitioner was “indulging in forum-shopping”. “This is the third petition filed by the petitioner. There are some very serious, vexatious allegations against religion. Please allow us to be impleaded. Allegations are really sad!” “We will hear you Mr Counsel,” Justice Shah assured.

“The petitioner is facing a Section 153A IPC charge,” Dave said. In an earlier hearing, the apex court had held that charity cannot be used for conversion. They had also asked the Centre to collect information from states regarding the steps taken against conversions through force or allurement.

In the last hearing, the bench had also said that it would not accept the objections raised against the maintainability of the PIL by some interveners. Several intervention applications have been filed in the apex court alleging that the petition was based on Whatsapp forwards and unattributed sources to create a false narrative of mass conversions.

On December 5, the first intervention in this matter was filed by a Kerala ‘rationalist association” which provided state-wide figures on the issue of conversions that were inconsistent with claims made in the PIL. They also accused the petitioner of having a political motive.