GUWAHATI: The Guwahati high court on Thursday quashed a lower court’s proceedings against senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy, stating that there was no legal evidence before the trial court when it took cognizance of the complaint on “hate speech”.
The final hearing of the petition, filed by the BJP leader in 2015, challenging the proceedings of a lower court in Assam’s Karimganj in Barak valley against him was held on November 11.
The court had reserved the judgment after the hearing. Senior advocate Swamy argued his own case in the HC as a “petitioner-in-person”, and was assisted by a senior lawyer of Guwahati high court, Bijan Mahajan, and others. A single-judge bench on Thursday pronounced the judgment by quashing the proceedings at the court of chief judicial magistrate, Karimganj. The case was initiated by a lawyer from Karimganj, Tutur Rahman Patikar, at the lower court against Swamy for allegedly creating communal disharmony and defaming a particular community while delivering a speech at a function organised by a private university in Guwahati in March, 2015.
