Police are pursuing a complaint about a play performed by children of the age 9 to 12 of a private school in Bidar district of Karnataka.
This case is an instance of the misuse of the sedition provision under Section124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
What is the Sedition law?
Section 124A of the IPC which was included in 1870 deals with sedition.
It states that whoever brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the Government established by law in India shall be punished.
The punishment varies from imprisonment up to 3 years to a life term and fine. Sedition is a non-bailable offence.
What were the actions taken?
The police have taken action for an allegedly seditious play against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
A teacher who supervised the performance and the parent of a child who added words to the script of the play were arrested.
The primary school children are subjected to sustained harassment with utter disregard for child-friendly legislations.
These actions are clear case of misuse of the power to arrest, as it is merely a verbal offence and doesn’t require custodial interrogation.
The police have deemed the opposition to the amendment act as something against the state.
What is the observed trend?
A Supreme Court Bench observed that words such as ‘anti-national’ and ‘sedition’ were being bandied about loosely these days.
The incident in Bidar serves as an example of this trend.
This incident also confirms that the law is often used to silence political comment on matters deemed sensitive by the rulers.
How Sedition should be invoked?
Sedition has been invoked to portray political dissent as promotion of disaffection.
But, it can’t be invoked without the essential ingredients for invoking the section, namely, an imminent threat to public order and incitement to take up arms or resort to violence.
This is a fact that is being forgotten often.
The section itself has an explanation that nothing that seeks to get the government to change its policy by lawful means is sedition.
What could be done?
The police system believes that everyone who is suspected of committing an offence is to be arrested
This belief is something that needs to be changed.
The conduct rules to punish the police personnel who violate the constitutional guarantees of free speech and personal liberty in an arbitrary way should be strengthened.
