Relief from Supreme Court to Yogi Adityanath in 2007 hate speech case!

The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a petition against an Allahabad High Court verdict that upheld the Uttar Pradesh government’s refusal to prosecute Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in the 2007 hate speech case.

A bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justices Hima Kohli and CT Ravikumar said the investigation of the First Information Report (FIR) had culminated in the closure report in 2017. A protest petition filed against the bandh was still pending in the trial court. ,

“In the above circumstances, we do not consider it necessary to go into the arguments raised by both the parties on the issue of denial of sanction for prosecution,” Justice Ravikumar, who penned the nine-page judgment, said.

However, the top court has left open legal questions on the issue of sanction.

The case against Mr. Adityanath in the judgment pointed out that he had allegedly given a hate speech “which led to the events being described as the ‘2007 Gorakhpur riots'”. He was an MP at that time.

The state government then directed a probe by the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB CID) of the Uttar Pradesh Police.

Several people had approached the High Court to transfer the investigation to an independent investigating agency.

But the High Court had dismissed the charges against the probe and found no fault in denying sanction to prosecute Mr. Adityanath in the state.

In the Supreme Court, the petitioners’ counsel Fujail Ahmed Ayyubi argued that Mr. Adityanath had become the chief minister and therefore it was the governor, and not the state government, who was the competent authority to decide on the question of sanction. ,

Opposing this, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi said that the petition in the Supreme Court was only an “academic exercise” as the closure report had already been filed in the matter. In addition, a CFSL report in 2014 had made grounds for prosecution for tampering and editing CDs.