Overzealous police

For the second time in less than a week, disproportionate or unreasonable use of authority to muzzle dissent has invited the court’s ire. On January 10, in a case pertaining to physical and digital restrictions in J&K, the Supreme Court had observed that Section 144 (unlawful assembly) of the CrPC could not be used as a tool to suppress difference of opinion. Four days later, the Delhi sessions court asserted that denying anybody his or her constitutional right to protest peacefully was unacceptable. The Additional Sessions Judge gave a dressing-down to the Delhi Police for arbitrarily arresting Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad, whose outfit had taken out a march from Jama Masjid to Jantar Mantar against the Citizenship Amendment Act on December 20 without police permission. The judge rapped the cops not only for failing to produce tangible evidence against Azad, but also for behaving ‘as if Jama Masjid was Pakistan’.

The court has firmly driven home the point that merely the choice of the protest site — a popular place of worship for Muslims — does not give the police the licence to ascribe seditious or communal motives. The cops also erred by citing Azad’s social media posts urging people to come to Jama Masjid and stage a dharna. These posts don’t establish in any way that he was inciting (or intended to incite) people to indulge in violence. Azad was simply expressing his opinion that the CAA-NRC-NPR could have an adverse impact on Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The overzealousness of the police has also been laid bare by the fact that Azad and 15 other persons arrested in the case have been granted bail by the court. Regarding the requirement of permission to hold such protests, the judge echoed the apex court’s view that indiscriminate use of Section 144 amounted to abuse of the law.

The strictures are a grim reminder that heavy-handed policing is detrimental to democracy. Police personnel are duty-bound to maintain law and order — without breaking or bypassing the law themselves. The law-enforcers should always apply the doctrine of proportionality, especially when there is little or no provocation.