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The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that courts are not supposed to do moral policing, while setting aside High Court order imposing Rs 10 lakh costs each on musician Vishal Dadlani and political activist Tehseen Poonawalla over certain tweets they posted in 2016 mocking a Jain monk.
In 2019, the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed the criminal case filed against them but imposed costs on them. Dadlani and Poonawala had allegedly insulted Jain saint Tarun Sagar on Twitter. Poonawala approached the apex court against the cost imposed on him by the High Court. "What kind of order is passed by the court? The court is not supposed to do moral policing. This is not a function of the court at all," said a bench of Justices Abhay S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan during the hearing of the case today. The bench further said that High Court should not have imposed costs on Poonawala and Dadlani after holding that no offence was made out against them and upholding their fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. "We are of the view that after finding that absolutely no offence was made out when exercising jurisdiction under Section 482 of the CrPC, High Court ought not to have exercised advisory jurisdiction by telling the appellant that the contribution made by the priest was much more than what the appellant and the other accused have contributed. Function of the court is not to do moral policing", the said the top court. Setting aside the High Court's direction to pay costs, the apex court said, "Perhaps High Court was swayed by the fact that the appellant and the other accused made criticism of a priest of a particular religion." The case arose from Dadlani's tweets criticising priest Tarun Sagar's nude appearance and the Haryana government's action of calling him to the Legislative Assembly. Poonawala posted a photoshopped image of a semi-nude woman alongside the Jain saint and raised a question about societal standards. While the High Court quashed the proceedings, it had imposed the cost on the duo saying they had insulted the priest and hurt the sentiments of the followers of the Jain religion. The High Court imposed the cost so that in future they may not mock any head of a religious sect for publicity on social media. (ANI)
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