A magistrate court in Mumbai has ordered the police to probe a complaint against actress Payal Rohatgi for allegedly spreading hatred towards a particular community through her tweets on anti-CAA activist and Jamia Student Safoora Zargar.
Metropolitan magistrate, Andheri, Bhagwat Zirape on March 30 ordered an enquiry against the actress under section 202 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and a copy of the same was made available on Monday.
“Every community has the right to profess its religion. No individual has the right to make a fun of any custom or rites of other communities,” the magistrate noted in his order.
Anti-CAA activist got bail relief as she was pregnant when imprisoned
27-year old Zargar, an MPhil student from Jamia Milia Islamia University was languishing in prison in connection with the Delhi Riots case. Zargar was pregnant at the time. Rohatgi’s tweet was in response to a post by a journalist who wished to sympathetically portray Zargar’s situation at the time. Zargar, was subsequently granted bail on humanitarian grounds.
Rohatgi’s tweets mentioned the Quran, the practice of Female Genital Mutilation, and sought to know if there were no condoms at the medical shop.
Based on the tweets, advocate Ali Kaashif Khan Deshmukh first approached the Amboli Police for registration of an FIR. When the police refused to take cognisance of the complaint Deshmukh approached the Andheri Court, in December. In his complaint, the lawyer had stated that Rohatgi’s tweets were “exceedingly derogatory” to the people of a particular community and her post defamed its women.
In its ruling, the Court observed that the tweets prima facie show disregard against Muslim women and the community as a whole. It added that a technical investigation regarding the tweets is necessary to proceed against the accused.
A probe under section 202 of the CrPC is ordered to determine whether a prima facie case is made out and whether there is sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused.
The court has asked the police to submit its enquiry report on April 30.
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