The Madras High Court on Thursday, February 8, 2024 refused to quash the criminal proceedings initiated against K. Annamalai, president of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Tamil Nadu unit, for having claimed in a YouTube interview that it was a Christian missionary NGO that had filed the first case before the Supreme Court seeking a ban on bursting of crackers during Deepavali.
Justice N. Anand Venkatesh dismissed the quash petition and directed a judicial magistrate in Salem to proceed with the complaint lodged by activist V. Piyush without being influenced by observations made for the purpose of rejecting the quash application. The judge agreed with advocate V. Suresh, representing the complainant, that the petitioner must face the proceedings.
According to the complainant, the BJP TN president had given an interview to a YouTube channel on October 22, 2022, just two days before the Deepavali festival that year. In that interview, he had deliberately fanned communal hatred against Christians by “lying” that it was a missionary NGO that had filed the first case before the apex court, the complainant alleged.
Stating that the first case against crackers was filed by the minor son of a well-known lawyer in Delhi, the complainant said: “Mr. Annamalai was very clearly and knowingly indulging in promoting disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill will between Hindus and Christians and amongst different groups on grounds of religion which was also clearly prejudicial to maintenance of harmony.“
Therefore, the complainant had instituted the criminal proceedings to prosecute the BJP leader under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups) and 505 (public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code.
