The Rajasthan High Court on Friday stayed any coercive action by the police against former Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot’s media adviser Lokendra Singh, who has been booked in a case related to phone tapping of some Congress MLAs.
Mr. Singh and another journalist were accused of spreading “misleading and fake news” on the MLAs shifted to Jaisalmer during the political crisis in the State two months ago.
The FIR, registered at Vidhyakpuri police station in Jaipur on October 1, had charged Mr. Singh and Sharat Kumar, State editor of a TV news channel, with circulating rumours through their reports on an alleged episode of phone tapping of the Congress MLAs, who were sequestered at a resort near Jaisalmer.
The Pilot camp had alleged on August 7 that the phones of some of the legislators were being tapped with the involvement of senior police officers. Though the Police Department denied the allegations, the Opposition BJP had demanded a probe into the episode. The MLAs supporting Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot were shifted for protection against the horse-trading attempts.
Mr. Singh, who handles Mr. Pilot’s press releases on social media, had approached the High Court last week seeking quashing of the FIR. His counsel S.S. Hora contended that no offence was made out against the accused and the filing of FIR was an attempt to curb freedom of speech, while his client faced the threat of arrest on false allegations.
The Single Judge Bench of Justice Goverdhan Bardhar directed in his interim order that no coercive action, including arrest, would be taken against the petitioner and asked the police to put up the case diary on the next date of hearing, November 18.
The case was registered on the complaint of an officer of the cyber crime police station, who said that the allegations of phone tapping were wrong and the publicising of “false information” through social media and news channel, also followed up later by some newspapers, amounted to an offence involving the intent to cause fear in the public.
The FIR had booked the two persons under Sections 505(1)(b) (circulating report with intent to cause fear or alarm), 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of Indian Penal Code as well as Section 76 (confiscation of computer on contravention of law) of the Information Technology Act.
