Why the Supreme Court’s new push to regulate social media threatens free expression
This week, three separate benches of the Supreme Court spoke of restricting freedom of speech on social media.
On Monday, a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Justice KV Viswanathan was hearing a petition by Kolkata-based Wazahat Khan seeking the consolidation of first information reports registered against him in Assam, Maharashtra, Delhi and Haryana over his social media posts.
In his posts, Khan had made allegedly offensive remarks about Hindu deities and festivals. Since last month, he has been under arrest for the posts by the West Bengal Police.
The bench continued the interim protection the court had granted Khan from arrest in the cases registered outside Bengal. But during the hearing, Nagarathna called for citizens to “regulate themselves” on social media and exercise “self restraint … to enjoy” the right to free speech and expression.
She noted that the “abuse of that freedom” was leading to the “clogging of courts” – without providing any data to support this claim. She then called for “guidelines to be issued to the citizens to comply”.
Over Monday and Tuesday, another bench of the court comprising Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Arvind Kumar heard an anticipatory bail plea by Indore-based cartoonist Hemant Malviya. Malviya had been booked in May for hurting religious sentiments.
His offence? Posting on social media a cartoon he...
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