The Supreme Court on Monday sought a response from Uttar Pradesh to a plea by Congress leader Pawan Khera to quash criminal proceedings instituted against him over an alleged mispronunciation of the name of the Prime Minister as ‘Narendra Gautam Das Modi’ at a press conference in Mumbai.
A Bench headed by Justice B.R. Gavai was hearing an appeal filed by Mr. Khera, represented by senior advocate A.M. Singhvi, against a recent refusal by the Allahabad High Court to quash the case. The court also agreed to examine an interim plea by Mr. Khera to stay the trial.
Mr. Singhvi, in a previous hearing, said his client had already posted an apology on ‘X’, formerly Twitter.
The press meet by Mr. Khera, during which he made the alleged remarks, was called to seek a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe into the U.S.-based Hindenburg Research’s report against the Adani Group.
On March 20, the Supreme Court had clubbed FIRs in Assam and Varanasi against Mr. Khera and transferred them to the Hazratganj Police in Lucknow. Initially, FIRs had been separately registered against Mr. Khera with Haflong Police at Dima Hasao district in Assam, Varanasi and Hazratganj in Uttar Pradesh.
The top court had intervened on February 23 to protect Mr. Khera just hours after he was deboarded from an IndiGo flight at the Delhi airport and detained. Mr. Khera, the chairperson of the Media and Publicity Department of the All India Congress Committee, was deplaned after a communication was received by the Domestic Airport Police in Delhi from the Haflong Police Station. He had been on his way to Raipur to attend a party plenary session.
In the series of Supreme Court hearings which followed the February 23 incident, Uttar Pradesh had contended that Mr. Khera’s utterances were a “deliberate attempt to denigrate a constitutional functionary”. The State had accused him of “dishonourably uttering the name of the late father of the Hon’ble Prime Minister to be ‘Gautam Das’ and further sarcastically remarking that though the name of his late father is Damodar Das’ but his work is similar to that of ‘Gautam Das’”.
The State had argued at the time that Mr. Khera’s readiness to apologise in the Supreme Court was merely a “tactical submission to get a preventive order without any genuine remorse or repentance”.
Mr. Khera had been variously booked under Sections 153A (promoting religious enmity), 153B (imputations or assertions prejudicial to national integration), 295A (outraging religious feelings), 500 (defamation), 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of peace), 505 (statements amounting to public mischief), 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
