A Bench of Justices PN Prakash and RMT Teekaa Raman while hearing a discharge petition for an offence committed under the provisions of UAPA, observed that though the petitioner, Mohan Ramasamy, had deleted the post from Facebook three days after sharing it, is not sufficient enough to discharge.

The bench rejected the prayer to discharge a specially-abled lawyer from Madurai who was booked by the National Investigating Agency for sharing a Facebook post two years ago that allegedly promoted the ideology of a banned organisation, Communist Party of India (Maoist). The order of the High Court came against an order passed by Special Court that rejected discharge application of Ramasamy. 

It was argued on behalf of the appellant that "mere uploading the impugned message by itself would not attract the provisions of The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 nor sedition under Section 124-A of IPC without anything more. He further contended that under Section 15 of the UAP Act, “Terrorist Act” has been defined which speaks about the commission of physical violence and not “speech”. It was also argued that within 3 days after uploading the post, the appellant withdrew the same which shows his good intention."

The Accused had shared the following text on the facebook:-

“The change of regime that happened in 1947 is a sham because it has not got rid of feudalism, imperialism and exploitation of the poor and therefore, August 15th is a farce independence. In order to gain real independence, let us mobilise in the path of war shown by Naxalbari.”

Reading this Facebook post the court observed that "A reading of the above shows that the appellant is being charged for promoting ideology of CPI (Maoist), which is a banned terrorist organization, listed in Sl.No.33 of the First Schedule of UAP Act, 1967.

Dismissing the petition, the High Court observed that "Just because it was withdrawn subsequently, cannot by itself, a reason to discharge the accused from the prosecution. Sub-section (o) of Section 2 of UAP Act,1967 is not in pari materia with Section 124-A of IPC. At the risk of repetition, along with Section 120-B, 124-A, 201 and 505 (1)(b) of IPC, the appellant is being prosecuted under Sections 13 (1)(b), 38 & 39 of UAP Act for being part of a banned terrorist outfit viz., CIP (Maoist) and promoting its ideologies. Whereas Section 124-A of IPC relates to sedition."

Case Details:-

Crl.A.No.610 of 2022
Mohan     ..... Appellant
Versus

Union of India   ...Respondent