“…the applicant had not been vigilant and has acted irresponsibly making her open to criminal prosecution in permitting streaming of a movie which is against the fundamental rights of the majority of citizens of this country and therefore, her fundamental right of life and liberty cannot be protected by grant of anticipatory bail to her in the exercise of discretionary powers of this court.”
~ The Allahabad High Court (25 February 2021), rejecting anticipatory bail to Amazon Prime’s India head Aparna Purohit.
Part III of the Indian Constitution guarantees six fundamental rights to Indian citizens as follows:
(i) right to equality (Articles 14 to 18),
(ii) right to freedom (Articles 19 to 22),
(iii) right against exploitation (Articles 23 and 24),
(iv) right to freedom of religion (Articles 25 to 28),
(v) cultural and educational rights (Articles 29 and 30), and
(vi) right to constitutional remedies (Article 32).
(i) right to equality (Articles 14 to 18),
(ii) right to freedom (Articles 19 to 22),
(iii) right against exploitation (Articles 23 and 24),
(iv) right to freedom of religion (Articles 25 to 28),
(v) cultural and educational rights (Articles 29 and 30), and
(vi) right to constitutional remedies (Article 32).
The Right to Property (Article 31), originally part of this list, was removed by the 44th Amendment in 1978.
To this was added the Right to Education via Article 21A by the 86th Amendment in 2002.
Where are the “fundamental rights of the majority of citizens of this country” that are being violated by the screening of a movie? Is there some article or section of the Constitution I have missed? Or have I not understood what the honourable court is trying to say? Or perhaps the honourable court knows of some hidden “fundamental rights of the majority…” that other mere mortals like me are missing.
Or then perhaps the honourable court is referring to the limits on the freedom of expression, which place restrictions on the said freedom if language is being used to instigate communal violence. If that is so, the only violence that seems to have happened is the one visited upon the defendants by the self-appointed representatives of the majority community.
In effect, the plaintiffs are claiming, “A secondary or tertiary character in one of several thousand scripts for fictional stories broadcast on a platform that people need to literally actively pay for in order to view, and must then specifically search for that particular story and request that it be played for them, fleetingly says a line about a mythological character in a made-up story (play) within that fictional story being broadcast, and because of that we feel that we must become violent since we are not mature adults capable of controlling our own emotions and must not be held responsible for our actions of physically hurting others for a line in such a fictional play in a fictional story on a paid platform; so would the honourable court please lock up everyone involved in the conceptualisation, scripting, production, distribution, and marketing of the entire platform on which this particular fictional program with this particular fictional play has a fictional character mouth the offensive line was broadcast?”
This is a laughable claim. However, the tragedy isn’t that someone asked for such a decree from the honourable court. The tragedy is the honourable court, no doubt in its immense wisdom, decided that it is worth their time and effort (not to mention our tax money) to entertain such a petition and start quoting from the Constitution…not to the complainants, mind you, who seem to have brought a transparently frivolous and completely fatuous suit to a court of justice undoubtedly busy with weightier matters involving actual life and death involving actual violation of a real person’s actual fundamental rights by other, more powerful real people and institutions…but to the defendants asking for bail (which, not to put too fine a point on it, is supposed to be considered perfectly usual, as in, “bail is the norm, jail is an exception”) and calling them (the defendants, and not the plaintiffs) ‘irresponsible’ in a case that is obviously a silly and wasteful expenditure of this court’s attention and this nation’s sparse resources.
Of course, I am aware that since that date, the High Courts around the country have granted relief to the defendants after an obsequious apology and abject surrender by the channel (no doubt to save their employees from needless incarceration). That being said, even if one single judge at one single court in India interprets the Constitution the way this one had, I would find it preposterous that such a person be allowed to continue to occupy the exalted chair of a dispenser of justice in a democratic republic.
And then, I realise that we have Supreme Court Chief Justice who asks a rapist to marry the victim as compensation for the rape and as a condition for the honourable judge to consider mercy. And I cry.
Image: Statue in front of the Supreme Court of India, showing Mother India sheltering a newborn republic.
