By- Varnika Agarwal
Introduction:
Munawar Faruqui was arrested by the Madhya Pradesh police. He was arrested under the charge of section 295A IPC i.e., a cognizable and non-bailable offence. One court happened to set aside his bail which was a court of an Additional Sessions judge. Later, when he moved to the High Court, his application was delayed because police forgot to bring the case paper. Later, Supreme Court granted ad-interim bail to comedian Munawar, stating that the allegations made in the FIR are vague.
Background:
On 1 January 2021, Madhya Pradesh police received a complaint made by son of BJP MLA Malini Gaud against comedian Faruqui, for committing an act of attempt to hurt religious sentiments, on which he was arrested. The complaint was registered for the offences punishable under Section 295A and Section 298 of IPC, among others.
Analysis :
Firstly, when police is making an arrest in a case like this and when a case appears before a Session Judge, there are two things that Session Judge must look into:-
Whether the ingredients of the offence are meet.
Magistrate must also look into (since detaining a person or arresting them is restricting their life and liberty) whether this person needs to be detained, if he is not detained of arrested, he will continue to make offence.
In Munawar Faruqui's case he was charged under various counts including insulting religious sentiments, instigating violence and was also booked for violating COVID rules. So, magistrate should have examined whether all these ingredients of the offence are meet. There were no recording of speeches or performance he made claiming the he cracked a joke. Yet, judge seemed to be for caution and denied him bail.
Even though Munawar got bailed by the Supreme Court, but, between the time he was in jail got punished in a way. So, in this case the process became the punishment. Cases with issues such as free speech and other significant issues in which police makes an arrest and lower judiciary also sort of giving the police pass, not asking too many questions and not asking more evidence on record shows that there is somewhere collapse in the system of how these cases are handled.
Conclusion:
Faruqui's case is a case of free speech, and a free speech jurisprudence in our country tells us that, “Free speech censorship is unconstitutional". Supreme Court has said it repeatedly that, “You have to have a person speak first and than adjudicate or examine whether his speech was lawful or unlawful”. We are living in a time where comedy is considered a crime and bail is considered an exception.
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