Scrutinise free speech cases more closely
Last week, political commentator and publisher Badri Seshadri was arrested from his home in Chennai in the early hours of Saturday.
The reason for the police from Perambalur district to travel nearly 300 km to make this speedy arrest was comments made by Seshadri during an interview on a YouTube channel criticising the Supreme Court and the Chief Justice of India on the Manipur issue.
He was booked for promoting enmity, wanton provocation with intent to cause a riot, etc., based on the complaint of a local lawyer. Needless to say, the state’s action came in for criticism from a wide section of society, especially from writers and journalists of all political leanings. Fortunately, Seshadri, unlike others arrested for exercising their right to speech in many parts of the country, was given conditional bail a few days later.
While this newspaper has previously argued that the provision of criminal contempt must go, it is important to note that in this case, the judiciary did not take up the issue, although Seshadri had used extremely harsh language. Instead, the question arises as to why the state police acted with such haste to register and make an arrest on a complaint that surely could not have been taken seriously.
Why do governments—Union or state—in India overreact with the entirety of their considerable might over what is often the most milquetoast of criticisms?
In Tamil Nadu, both under the current DMK and the previous AIADMK, police have arrested people for remarks against the respective parties or chief ministers on personal social media pages or memes posted on X, formerly Twitter. Ironically, the ruling DMK has been a strong voice in decrying such authoritarian actions by the Centre and other state governments.
Assuming that these actions in Tamil Nadu are not the product of political pressures but of an overzealous police force, perhaps it is time for the state government to train law enforcement personnel and judicial officers (who often refuse bail by rote) to scrutinise complaints impinging on free expression more closely before taking up cases, making arrests and subjecting an individual to the punishment that is the process while they wait for recourse from the higher judiciary.