यह एक अच्छा संकेत नहीं है कि सर्वोच्च न्यायालय अब व्यक्तिगत स्वतंत्रता की रक्षा के लिए एकमात्र मंच है
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There is a sense of relief among everyone who values personal liberty and free speech, following the grant of interim bail to Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News.
व्यक्तिगत स्वतंत्रता और अभिव्यक्ति की स्वतंत्रता को महत्व देने वाले सभी लोगों में राहत
Given that multiple cases were registered
for the same alleged offence,
most of them based on tweets, personal liberty and freedom of expression were both under threat.
In the face of an assertive executive in times of majoritarian nationalism
it has become normal for magistrates to comply with any demand for the police to-
remand those brought before them to custody and to deny them bail regardless of the merit or lack of it in those cases.
पुलिस की किसी भी मांग का पालन करें कि उनके सामने लाए गए लोगों को हिरासत में लिया जाए और उनकी योग्यता या कमी की परवाह किए बिना उन्हें जमानत देने से इनकार कर दिया जाए।
In the case of Mr. Zubair
1 it was quite palpable that he was being hounded by the police acting on complaints manifestly motivated by communal considerations.
सांप्रदायिक विचारों से प्रेरित शिकायतों पर कार्रवाई करते हुए उनका पीछा किया जा रहा था
2 Apart from the first FIR in Delhi based on a 2018 tweet referencing a scene in a film from the early 1980s,
3 he has been accused of receiving foreign donations without a licence to do so.
4 Further, some obviously trivial and absurd cases of insulting religious feelings based on innocuous सिम्पल tweets have made it quite clear that -
💐the investigation is not so much about what he said ,
💐as about how he could be harassed and hounded to the point of making him leave his vocation of fact-checking and silence his voice.
💐 Everyone must, therefore, welcome the judicial pushback from the Supreme Court in seeing through the game plan behind the registration of multiple FIRs at the instance of votaries of Hindutva.
The Bench
1 did not proceed to quash the various cases against Mr. Zubair,
2 but it has ordered the clubbing of all cases and transferring the investigation to the Delhi Police.
3 As a consequence, the Special Investigation Team formed by the Uttar Pradesh Police to initiate a wide-ranging probe against him has been ordered to be disbanded.
The virtues of the order are
1 not limited to the grant of relief.
2 In the process, the Bench has recognised that some FIRs are similar in content and that there is an effort to subject him to “endless rounds of proceedings before diverse courts”. विभिन्न अदालतों के समक्ष कार्यवाही के अंतहीन दौर"
3 It has also declined to bar him from tweeting further, noting that no one’s voice could be stifled दबा देना या रोकना like that
💐 when anything said in the public domain was open to scrutiny for possible transgressions उल्लंघन of the law.
This is a blow for free speech
at a time when some courts impose gag बोलने से रोकना orders as part of the conditions for grant of bail.
That it needed the country’s highest court to grant such relief is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in the country.
The overall atmosphere is so vitiated by state-backed majoritarianism that the Supreme Court has become the only forum for protecting personal liberty,
while the lower judicial echelons do not seem to be up to the task.निचले न्यायिक क्षेत्र कार्य करने के लिए तैयार नहीं हैं।
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