CHENNAI: Union Minister for State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Labour & Employment Shobha Karandlaje has moved the Madras HC seeking orders to quash an FIR registered against her by the Madurai police in connection with her comments on the Bengaluru Rameshwaram Cafe blast.
The FIR was registered based on a complaint filed by C Thiagarajan of Madurai that the minister had attempted to create enmity between Tamils and Kannadigas with her comments, “People trained in TN planted bombs here (Bengaluru).”
However, the BJP leader, in her petition, said she had retracted the comments and tweeted that those were “solely directed towards those trained in the Krishnagiri forest linked to the Rameshwaram Cafe blast” .
She said the complaint lacks the three ingredients to invoke section 153 of IPC as stated by the SC-- the act must be illegal, such illegal act must be malignantly done and as a result, there must be a situation which may cause riot.
“By no stretch of the imagination, the phrase ‘people trained in TN’ can be construed as a religious, racial, language or regional group or castes or community,” Shobha claimed, adding the complainant’s charge that she had sought to pit Tamils against Kannadigas ‘is a figment of imagination’.
Pointing out that prior sanction from authorities is required to register cases under section 153 of IPC, she said the absence of sanction under Section 196 of CrPC vitiates the charges under 153(A), 505(1)(b) and 505(2).