Alleged defamatory comments against Home Minister: High Court orders govt. not to take coercive steps against CPI(M) member

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The Kerala High Court has directed the State to refrain from taking coercive steps against lawyer and Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] Ernakulam district secretariat member K.S. Arunkumar who was accused of defaming Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala by commenting on his recent foreign trip to the United States on social media.

Justice C.S. Dias further ordered that Mr. Arunkumar must be notified before any questioning for inquiry of offences under the Kerala Police Act (KP Act), 2011.

The court was considering a petition by Mr. Arunkumar, seeking to quash the first information report (FIR) registered against him and all further proceedings related to it. He was charged with offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, for provocation of riots and committing criminal defamation and for harassment under the KP Act.

The Thiruvananthapuram City cyber crime police station had registered the case on a complaint by B.S. Subija, a United Democratic Front (UDF) member, alleging that Mr. Arunkumar had shared defamatory and inciting posts on social media targeting the Home Minister.

However, Mr. Arunkumar argued in his petition that the social media post that he published only contained a political observation comparing the media coverage that political leaders receive for foreign trips across different tenures. He pointed out that even if the allegations were taken at face value, it did not constitute any of the offences registered in the FIR.

Leader of the Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan had recently accused the government of adopting an authoritarian approach to criticism in a Facebook post, after the police registered the case. He said that Mr. Arunkumar “was raising pertinent questions about the Home Minister’s trip”, and that the move to register a case against him reflected the government’s “extreme intolerance towards criticism”.

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