The Supreme Court on Wednesday voiced concern over the damage to public property during agitations, saying the country cannot be held to ransom and that it will lay down parameters for fixing accountability for the losses.
A bench headed by Justice J S Khehar said:
You cannot burn the country’s or its citizens’ property. We must take a call on the issue and we would frame guidelines for taking action against people indulging in such acts. The country must know what are the consequences. No one can take the country to ransom during agitations – whether it is BJP or Congress or any other organisation, they must realise that they can be held accountable for the damage to the public property.
This observation was made by the bench while hearing a plea of Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel seeking to quash the FIR lodged against him.
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said, “Now after FIR, the charge sheet has been filed and it cannot be tested in the Supreme Court.”
The bench said that the petitioner was more concerned about bail and not the charge sheet. To this, Rohatgi replied that his bail applications are already pending before the sessions court.
The bench then added that it had decided to look into the larger issue of damage to public properties during agitations and posted the matter for hearing on Thursday.
The apex court had on 14 January asked the AG to assist it in dealing with cases where public property has been damaged on a large scale.
Earlier, the court had allowed the Gujarat Police to file a charge sheet in the case in which it was alleged that Hardik Patel had instigated the community members to kill policemen and adopted violent ways to “wage war against Gujarat government”.
Besides the present case, the apex court will also hear another plea filed by Hardik challenging the High Court’s decision declining to quash the sedition charge invoked against him and others for allegedly attacking police stations in the state.
In his plea, Hardik has claimed that the charges have wrongly been invoked against him as there was no conspiracy to wage war against the government and, at best, it is the case of using “intemperate language” which can be tried under some other penal provisions.
The state police had lodged the case in October against 22-year-old Hardik and five of his close aides on the charge of sedition and waging war against the government – all were arrested and are currently behind bars.
The High Court had ordered the removal of three IPC sections in the FIR – sections 121 (waging war against government), 153-A (promoting enmity between different communities) and 153-B (assertions prejudicial to national integrity) against Hardik and five of his aides.
It, however, refused to drop IPC sections 124 (sedition) and 121-A (conspiracy to wage war against government), which attract a punishment of life imprisonment and up to 10 years respectively.
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