NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Himachal Pradesh Police to submit its status report, in a sealed cover, on the investigation into the sedition case registered against senior journalist Vinod Dua. The court was hearing Dua’s plea to quash the sedition case registered against him in Shimla.
A bench headed by Justice U U Lalit said the court wanted to verify if the probe was in the right earnest. The court said it could quash the case if it found no merit in the allegations against Dua. The bench observed that the questions posed to Dua didn’t form any empirical evidence in a sedition case.
The court also extended the protection given to Dua till July 15.
Senior advocate Vikas Singh appearing for Dua told the bench that he had received a second questionnaire from the Himachal Pradesh Police though he has already answered one before. The bench said Dua didn’t need to send his reply.
Singh cited an example about the nature of questions sent by the Shimla Police to him and read out one question which enlisted steps put in place by the Centre to control the spread of COVID-19 and asked Dua to explain why he had said, on his show, that it was not taking sufficient measures to curb infection rates.
Dua had responded by saying that he based it on research carried out by him and also, an article by Congress leader P Chidambaram.