The Supreme Court bench said by repeating what Kangana Ranaut said about Sikhs, the petitioner who is a Sikh advocate is doing more disservice to the cause.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea brought by a Sikh advocate, Charanjeet Singh Chanderpal, seeking censorship on Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut’s social media statements. A bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Bela Trivedi suggested that the petitioner has two possible solutions: one is to ignore the utterances made by Kangana or avail remedy under law.
“You are doing your cause a disservice by publicising what she said. The more you publicise it, the more you serve her cause. So, please stop repeating,” Chandrachud said in reference to the petitioner’s object to what Kangana said about the Sikhs.
In the plea, the advocate referred to Kangana’s Instagram statement where she wrote, “Khalistani Terrorists may be arm twisting the Government today, but let’s not forget one woman, the only woman Prime Minister ne inko apni jooti ke neeche crush kiya tha (the only woman PM who crushed them under her shoes)…No matter how much suffering she caused to this nation… she crushed them like mosquitoes at the cost of her own life…. Lekin desh k tukde nahi hone diye…even after decades of her death… aaj bhi uske naam se kampte hain yeh…. Inko vaisa he guru chahiye… (they shiver from her name even today…they need such a guru).”
Petitioner Chanderpal said Kangana is going on and on with her “outrageous” and “defamatory” statements that “Sikh Farmers were Khalistani Terrorists” and tried to portray the community as “anti-national”. “When we go to Gurudwaras, when we sit with the normal Sikhs over there, people don’t distinguish between who is a Khalistani and who is a Sikh,” the petitioner said.
“Don’t you think that common Indian citizens understand this and know the differences?” the bench asked him.
The petitioner sought to club multiple FIRs lodged against Kangana to which the bench said, “You want all FIRs to be clubbed and investigated exclusively by the Khar police? Who are you to do all this? You are not the accused, you are not the complainant, you are some person in the public, you are a member of the bar…”
