Not even the police in India are immune to the nation’s colonial era sedition laws, as former cop Shashidhar Venugopal found when he was arrested in June, 2016. Sedition is a non-bailable offence, and of the seven offences Shashidhar was charged under, it was the most serious. His crime? Calling for police constables of the state of Karnataka to go on strike, demanding better treatment and higher wages.
India’s sedition laws have often been called draconian. Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech with ‘reasonable restrictions’ is weakened by the effect of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which states that:
Whoever by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.
The IPC was first enacted in 1860, at a time where Government once referred to the Queen and India to British India. The Sedition offence added in 1870 (first mentioned by Thomas Macaulay in his draft Penal Code of 1835). Since then, it has been used to arrest Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru – and most infamously in recent times – Arundhati Roy and Kanhaiya Kumar. But the law’s real teeth are bared against the countless not-so-famous citizens who come under it. Everyone comes under this law, even aircraft and ships. And the police don’t require a warrant to execute it.
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