Let cops decide when to file FIRs for hate speeches, Centre tells SC

New Delhi: The police should be allowed to decide when cases for hate speeches should be registered, the Centre’s second most-senior law officer Tushar Mehra told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Mehta also countered the claim that BJP leader Kapil Mishra’s speech led to the communal clash in Delhi last month that has killed 46 people and left over 250 injured. “It is fallacious to believe that one statement would have led to the riots,” Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told a bench led by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde.

Lawyer Colin Gonsalves had, moments earlier, asked for directions to the police to immediately file FIRs against BJP leaders such as Kapil Mishra and Union minister Anurag Thakur.

Their speeches and slogans, Gonsalves said, were not merely hate speeches but also calls for mobilisation and amounted to an attempt to murder. It is only after they made their statements that other leaders caught on,

The bench is hearing petitions filed by 10 riot victims and social activist Harsh Mander. It has, for now, declined to hear Mander’s lawyer till it figures out if he made a controversial speech in which, Mehta alleged, Harsh Mander had declared he did not have faith in the Supreme Court.

But on the request by 10 riot victims, the Supreme Court ruled that their prayer on the long adjournment by the high court is “justified”.