Karnataka High Court stays probe against man for tweet on Bantwal woman’s murder case
The Karnataka High Court has stayed criminal investigations against a man for a tweet regarding a murder case in Bantwal. The court ruled that the tweet did not contain explicit communal references and that criminality cannot be inferred through imagination.
Why it matters
This case highlights the ongoing legal tension between freedom of speech on social media and laws regarding the promotion of communal disharmony in India.
Observing that “courts cannot permit criminality to be inferred by imagination when the words themselves refuse to yield such meaning”, the High Court of Karnataka has stayed investigation into two separate criminal cases registered against a man at two different police stations for a single tweet related to recent murder of a young woman at the Bantwal bus stand in Dakshina Kannada district.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the interim order on petitions filed by 37-year-old Kiran, while observing that the language used in the tweet, prima facie, did not contain any explicit reference to a specific religion, community, or caste.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in