The Supreme Court on Thursday declined 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.
“Wishing away an offence, is that possible?” Justice Sandeep Mehta, a member of the Bench headed by Justice B.R. Gavai, asked senior advocate Salman Khurshid, appearing for Mr. Khera.
Justice Gavai said the Allahabad High Court had refused to quash the case after considering the charge sheet, “you go on seeking apology after apology”.
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.
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FIRs clubbed
On March 20 last year, 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 the Haflong police at Dima Hasao district in Assam, Varanasi and Hazratganj in Uttar Pradesh.
The apex court had intervened on February 23, 2023 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 at Dima Hasao in Assam. He had been on his way to Raipur to attend a party plenary session.
In the series of apex court hearings which followed the February 23 incident, the State of 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’”.
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), and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
