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The Tripura High Court, while recently quashing FIR registered u/s 295 A, Indian Penal Code,1860 (“IPC”), has observed that the section does not penalize every act of insult or attempt to insult the religion or religious belief, but it punishes only those acts of insults or attempts which have been perpetrated with the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of a particular class.

“Bhagavad Gita is part of Hindu mythology of Mahabharat and it is in the form of a conversation between the warrior prince Arjun and Lord Krishna when in the battle ground Arjun had serious doubts regarding the needless destruction. A purist may not describe it as a holy book since it does not contain religious tenets. Nevertheless, it is treated as something sacred and a revered book containing Hindu scriptures. Deliberate and direct insult or derogation of such a work if otherwise done intentionally and to borrow the expressions of the Supreme Court in case of Ramji Lal Modi (supra), in order to outrage the religious feelings of the community, would undoubtedly in a given case fall with the mischief of Section 295A of IPC.”, Single Bench of Chief Justice Anil Kureshi noted. 

In the present matter, an FIR was registered against the petitioner u/s 295A of IPC on the ground that the petitioner hurt the Hindu Community's religious feelings by putting a comment on his Facebook. Thereafter the petitioner filed a petition u/s 482 CrPC for quashing of impugned FIR by contending that the posts in questions were deliberately twisted & misinterpreted & that he neither had the intention nor desired to hurt the religious feelings of any community or class of citizens. 

The Bench referred to the judgement of Apex Court in Ramji Lal Modi v. State of U.P AIR 1957 SC 620 in which the Court observed that 

“In the first place cl. (2) of Art.19 protects a law imposing reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right to freedom of speech and expression "in the interest of public order,” which is much wider than "for maintenance of" public order. If, therefore, certain activities have a tendency to cause public disorder, a law penalising such activities as an offence cannot but be held to be a law imposing reasonable restriction "in the interests of public order" although in some cases those activities may not actually lead to a breach of public order. In the next place S.295A does not penalise any and every act of insult to or attempt to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of a class of citizens but it penalises only those acts of insults to or those varieties of attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of a class of citizens, which are perpetrated with the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of that class. Insults to religion offered unwittingly or carelessly or without any deliberate or malicious intention to outrage the religious feelings of that class do not come within the section. It only punishes the aggravated form of insult to religion when it is perpetrated with the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of that class. The calculated tendency of this aggravated form of insult is clearly to disrupt the public order and the section, which penalises such activities, is well within the protection of cl. (2) of Art.19 as being a law imposing reasonable restrictions on the exercise of the right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Art. 19(1)(a). Having regard to the ingredients of the offence created by the impugned section, there cannot, in our opinion, be any possibility of this law being applied for purposes not sanctioned by the Constitution. In other words, the language employed in the section is not wide enough to cover restrictions both within and without the limits of constitutionally permissible legislative action affecting the fundamental right guaranteed byArt. 19(1)(a)and consequently, the question of severability does not arise and the decisions relied upon by learned counsel for the petitioner have no application to this case.”

Reliance was also placed on Mahendra Singh Dhoni versus Yerraguntla Shyamsundar and Another (2017) 7 SCC 760 in which the three judge Bench of Apex Court observed that, 

“Section 295-A does not stipulate everything to be penalised and any and every act would tantamount to insult or attempt to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of a class of citizens. It penalises only those acts of insults to or those varieties of attempts to insult the religion or religious belief of a class of citizens which are perpetrated with the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of that class of citizens. Insults to religion offered unwittingly or carelessly or without any deliberate or malicious intention to outrage the religious feelings of that class do not come within the section.”

The Court noted that mere passing allegations of the petitioner being in the habit of placing such posts could not be the ground for permitting a fishing inquiry as neither in the complaint nor before the State, petitioner’s previous posts were offending in nature. In this context, the Bench observed that “Without there being any background or foreground it is not possible for any reasonable human being with ordinary common sense and intelligence, to discern any derogatory or demeaning meaning being ascribed by the petitioner to the holy book.”

Thus, while quashing the impugned FIR, the Bench observed that the words used by the petitioner did not even remotely convey the meaning which the complainant wanted to extract out of the expression. 

Case Title: Sri Dulal Ghosh v. The State of Tripura 

Law Point/Statute Involved: Section 295 A of the Indian Penal Code,1860 & Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure,1973