SRINAGAR: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has dismissed a plea by Mubeen Ahmad Shah challenging a police FIR registered against him for a series of Facebook posts allegedly inciting communal disharmony and posing a threat to national unity.
Justice Sanjay Dhar, in a detailed judgment, upheld the legal basis of the FIR, observing that the posts in question were “bluntly prejudicial” to communal harmony and had the potential to severely disturb public order in the region.
The case stemmed from FIR No. 71/2020 filed at Police Station Ram Munshi Bagh, which accused Shah of uploading social media content urging village and town committees in Kashmir to expel non-locals and socially boycott those who accommodate them or issue domicile certificates to outsiders. The posts, the court noted, were not mere expressions of dissent but calls to action that explicitly threatened officials and targeted communities based on place of origin.
Justice Dhar wrote that such posts clearly incited hatred, adding: “They have the tendency of promoting enmity between Kashmiris and other people living in the Country.” The court also took serious note of a post that called for a boycott of India and Indian businesses, terming such rhetoric as dangerously subversive of national sovereignty.
Rejecting the petitioner’s argument that the URL cited in the FIR could not be linked to him, the judge held that such factual questions were the domain of police investigation and could not be resolved in proceedings under Section 482 of the CrPC.
The judgment also flagged significant procedural lapses in the petition. Although the plea had been submitted during the Covid-19 pandemic under relaxed virtual filing norms, Shah had failed to provide a signed original petition or a proper vakalatnama even after the courts resumed normal functioning. An affidavit annexed to the interim relief plea was found to have been sworn in Malaysia without a valid attestation, further weakening the petition’s credibility.
Holding that the posts revealed prima facie material justifying criminal investigation under Sections 153, 153-A, 505, and 506 of the Indian Penal Code, the court dismissed the petition outright, asserting that there was “no merit” in the contention that the FIR was without legal foundation. -(KL)
