No cognisable offence for FIR: SC on hate speech case against BJP’s Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that no cognisable offence for the filing of a first information report had been made out on a petition against alleged acts of hate speech by Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma in 2020, Live Law reported.

The judgement was delivered by a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta while dealing with a petition filed by Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat against a Delhi High Court order that upheld a trial court’s refusal to direct the registration of a case against the BJP leaders.

At a rally in January 2020, Thakur was heard shouting “desh ke gaddaron ko” and the crowd responded with “goli maaro saalon ko”. The slogan meant “shoot the traitors”, with an expletive used for “traitors” being a reference to those protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act.

In his speech, Parvesh Verma had told an audience that the “lakhs of protestors” who have gathered at Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh would enter their homes to “rape their sisters and daughters and kill them”.

The speeches were made ahead of the Assembly elections in Delhi in 2020. Soon after, riots had broken out in North East Delhi in February that year, in which 53 persons died and hundreds were injured. The majority of...

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