The Apex court has sent all the first information reports lodged against the former media head of Bharatiya Janata Party’s Delhi unit Naveen Kumar Jindal who made remarks on Prophet to the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police.
This team has been specially designed to prevent cybercrimes, online abuse, and communal disharmony .
Naveen Jindal was represented by Senior Advocate Geeta Luthra who citing the orders passed in similar cases of Nupur Sharma and Navika Kumar, urged the Court for providing protection against cocoercive steps to Jindal.
Advocate Luthra also asked the court for transfering all the FIRs filed against Jindal in different parts of the country to Delhi Police and for clubbing them.
For the Investigating agency, Additional Solicitor-General Vikramjit Banerjee readily agreed to the proposal, and told the bench that the investigating team in Delhi has already begun the work.
Solicitor-General Vikramjit Banerjee said, it does not make any difference as tweet seen in Delhi or Kolkata are the same.The same tweet, the same Twitter handle is being investigated.
The bench has not passed any order in the same so far. Justice Shah categorically said, the court shall not pass any order to suggest that all FIRs registered in the future with respect to this issue will also stand transferred to Delhi Police.
The Court however said that it will transfer only those cases which are pending and no other cases.”
Interestingly, in case of the Navika Kumar case, another Division Bench led by Justice M.R. Shah had directed all the the investigation against the Times Now anchor be transferred to the IFSO unit of Delhi Police.
On the “aspect of safety and security” agitated by Luthra, Justice Shah said, “There is no apprehension at all. We have only granted protection where the threat perception was pointed out. You can write an application if you want. We do not want to give such a privilege to the accused.”
The bench said considering that they have disposed the present writ petition [with the direction that] all FIRs/complaints are ordered to be transferred to the IFSO unit of Delhi Police…”