K Annamalai has moved the apex court challenging the Madras High Court order.
New Delhi:
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed proceedings in a criminal case registered against Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai for allegedly making hate speech against Christians in an interview to a YouTube channel regarding bursting of firecrackers in October 2022. .
After perusing the transcript of the statements made in the interview, a bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta said, “Prima facie, there is no hate speech. No case is made out.” The bench issued notice to the complainant, who had accused Annamalai of making hate speech against Christians in an interview on October 22, 2022, in connection with bursting of firecrackers two days before Diwali.
“Issue notice in the week commencing April 29, 2024. In the meantime, further proceedings before the trial court will be stayed,” the bench said in its order.
Senior advocate Siddharth Luthra and advocate Sai Deepak, appearing in the court on behalf of Annamalai, showed the transcript of the interview to the bench and said it was not a case of hate speech.
Annamalai has moved the apex court challenging the order of the Madras High Court which had refused to quash the summons issued to him in the case.
Refusing to quash the summons on February 8, the high court said psychological impact on an individual or group should also be considered under the definition of hate speech.
The trial court had issued the summons on the basis of the complaint of a person named V Piyush.
The high court had said that Annamalai had given an interview to a YouTube channel, the run-time of which was approximately 44.25 minutes, and a six-and-a-half-minute excerpt of it was shared on Bharatiya Janata Party’s X. Then Twitter) handle on 22 October 2022.
The content of the message was that there was an internationally funded Christian missionary NGO that was allegedly involved in destroying Hindu culture by filing cases in the Supreme Court to stop Hindus from bursting crackers.
The high court had said that prima facie, the statements reveal the divisive intention of the petitioner to portray the NGO as working against Hindu culture.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
