By Jose Kavi
New Delhi, May 11, 2022: Christian activists in India on May 11 recalled “the sacrifice” of Jesuit Father Stan Swamy while welcoming the Supreme Court order to keep the country’s sedition law on abeyance.
Father Stan, as he was popularly known, died July 5, 2021, in a Mumbai hospital as an undertrial prisoner. The National Investigation Agency invoked the sedition law to arrest him on October 8, 2020, from his residence near Ranchi, Jharkhand, for his alleged links with Maoist groups. The NIA court and the Mumbai High Court had kept rejecting his bail applications.
The apex court’s May 11 order is expected to bring relief to thousands of such people charged under Section 124A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial-era rule.
The court restrained the federal and state governments from registering First Information Reports under the section, continuing investigations or taking coercive steps while the colonial law is being reviewed by the government.
A three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice of India N V Ramana also directed that an accused in a fresh case could seek bail and the court that deals with it would provide relief taking into account the apex court order.
The order came after the federal government, represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, acknowledged that the law was not in tune with the current times, was being misused and required re-examination.
All pending cases will be kept in abeyance while the government reconsiders the sedition law, the Supreme Court said, referring to petitions that challenged the law alleging its misuse.
“It is a welcome step that the apex court has stepped in to stop abuse of the pre-colonial law that criminalizes dissident voices not favorable to the government. It is huge relief for minority, Dalit and Adivasi activists, who suffer most,” says Father Ajay Singh, a social activist in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
Jesuit Father Arockiasamy Santhanam, spokesperson for the National Lawyers Forum of Religious and Priests, points out that successive governments have misused the sedition law to suppress the voices of dissent. “Even constructive criticism is not tolerated and labeled as sedition. As the court once said, Sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of governments,” the Madurai-based lawyer says.
According to him, Father Stan and others implicated in the Bhima Koregaon case have been slapped by the draconian section. “After the apex court’s staying the provision, they are entitled for bail without any second thought,” Father Santhanam says.
The Indian Catholic Forum welcomes the order as a bold, pragmatic and humanitarian action. Forum convener Kanpur-based chhotebhai says the section penalizes those that “by words, either spoken or written or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India.”
The “the vagueness” in the sedition law has been repeatedly misused to let political opponents, social and human rights activists, journalists and others to “rot in jail; or even die without trial, like Jesuit Father Stan Swamy,” chhotebhai bemoans.
Welcoming the Supreme Court’s suspension of the section and letting detainees to apply for bail, chhotebhai says it could have also “stipulated under what circumstances bail could be granted. That being so, the sacrifice of (Father Stand) would not have been in vain.”
He says the draconian law was introduced by the British colonial rulers when it brought the Section 124A in 1870 and substituted it by Act 4 of 1898. After independence, the Indian government replaced terms like “Her Majesty” or “The Crown” with “the Government established by Law in India,” he adds.
“Hence this section needs to be either revoked or radically modified to ensure that it is invoked, if at all, only in the rarest of rare cases, as the Supreme Court has earlier directed for capital punishment,” asserts the former national president of the All India Catholic Union.
Presentation Sister Dorothy Fernandes, a social activist in Patna, says the court order is “a welcome relief” to academicians, social activists and human rights defenders and other innocent people languishing in the jail. The national secretary of the Forum of Religious for Justice and Peace, an advocacy group for Catholic religious, terms as “indeed a shame and blot in the history of our country” that these people have spent years in jail, their bail petitions rejected without any respite.
The activists are skeptical about the result of the government review of the law.
“I still fear the government could scuttle the move to do away with the law with the lame excuse of studying or might bring another law in the name of fighting terrors,” Father Singh says.
Father Santhanam expressed surprise at the government’s “sudden U-Turn” on the issue. “It tries to present itself as a progressive government. But there is fear the government has another more stringent weapon,” he says while stressing the need to scrap the sedition law “if the rulers respect dissenting voices and welcome healthy criticisms in the interest of the nation.”
Sister Fernandes wonders if the government would implement the court order immediately. The number of sedition cases filed is shocking in a country that shouts the slogan “sab ka saath, sab ka vikas” (together with all, development for all), she says.
The activist nun says she was “on the verge of losing faith in the judicial system of our country. I pray that we will have more courageous Judges who will safeguard the rights of people and let Truth prevail.”
Father Singh too salutes the apex court for bringing hope. Its latest order is a “step towards restoring faith in the judiciary,” he added.