Repeated misuse of sedition law underlines the need to scrap it altogetherA sessions court in Delhi has affirmed the belief that a dispassionate scrutiny of outlandish claims by the police is necessary for protecting the liberty of those jailed on flimsy, often political, reasons. In particular, the judge has applied the established test for a charge of sedition under Section 124A of the IPC to pass muster: that the act involved must constitute a threat to public order and incitement to violence. He found that there was not even an iota of evidence indicating that the ‘toolkit’, a shared Google cloud document with ideas on how to go about amplifying the protests, in anyway incited violence. It is by now fairly clear to everyone except, perhaps, the government and its vociferous supporters, that there is no place in a modern democracy for a colonial-era legal provision such as sedition. Too broadly defined, prone to misuse, and functioning as a handy tool to repress activism, the section deserves to be scrapped.

Source: The Hindu February 26, 2021 18:33 UTC