HC grants protection to Bharti Singh in 'hurting religious sentiments' case

Saurabh Malik
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, January 27

Just about four days after the Punjab and Haryana High Court directed that coercive steps would not be taken against Raveena Tandon and Farah Khan in a case alleging hurting of religious sentiments, a Bench granted similar protection to another Bollywood personality Bharti Singh in the matter.

Taking up the petition seeking the quashing of the FIR, Justice Sudip Ahluwalia on Monday made it clear that the plea would come up for further hearing on March 25, along with the petition filed by Tandon and Khan.

Bharti Singh, in the petition filed through Abhinav Sood, Pallav Mongia and Gaurav Girish Shukla, had sought directions to the State of Punjab against the initiation of coercive action during the pendency of the petition.

Taking up a similar petition by Tandon and Khan, Justice Ashok Kumar Verma of the High Court had on January 23 issued notice of motion for March 25 to the State of Punjab and another respondent.

Bharti also sought the quashing on the grounds that the FIR was illegal and bad in law. An FIR for deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs was registered under Section 295-A of the IPC at Ajnala police station on December 25.

Her counsel submitted that the FIR was illegal, ex-facie bad in law and was required to be quashed. Referring to the allegations in the FIR, Sood submitted in the petition that Bharti was accused of making a joke of a word and playing with religious sentiments of a particular community.

Sood said she was guest/participant in the show telecast on digital platform.

Tandon and Bharti, being participants-guests in the show ‘Back Benchers’ had only spelled the word. Going into the background, the counsel submitted that while Tandon spelt it correctly, Bharti misspelt it. It apparently meant that Bharti did not know the word and was referring to another word in Hindi.

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