Criticising government inaction doesn’t promote hatred: Supreme Court

Censure of government inaction cannot be branded as an attempt to promote hatred between different sections of society, the SC has ruled. Neither can free speech of citizens be stifled by implicating them in criminal cases, unless such speech has the tendency to affect public order, a bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao and S Ravindra Bhat said while quashing an FIR registered against editor of Shillong times Patricia Mukhim who had spoken out against the Meghalaya government’s failure to check violence unleashed against non-tribals in the state.

Mukhim had spoken out against the violence in a Facebook post. The Conrad Sangma government had registered an FIR against her under charges of ‘causing disaffection’ between different communities in its wake. The top court said that the complaint made by the Dorbar Shnong that the statement would incite communal tension and might instigate a communal conflict in the entire state was just a figment of imagination. The fervent plea for protection of non-tribals living in Meghalaya and for their equality cannot, by any stretch of imagination, be categorised as hate speech.