No FIR against Geelani, Roy

Oct 29, 2010 - Age Correspondent |

New Delhi

The Centre on Thursday decided not to file any case against hardline Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and activist Arundhati Roy for purportedly giving “hate speeches” at a seminar held here last week.

According to sources in the Union home ministry, the decision was taken after considering various issues and it was decided that such a move would give unnecessary publicity to them and a handle to the separatists in the Valley. We have decided to ignore them, sources said.
Following the October 21 incident, where Mr Geelani, Ms Roy and others had made the alleged statements having secessionist tones, the home ministry had sought legal opinion on the issue. The opinion it got was that a case could be made out under Section 124(A) of IPC (disaffection against the state).
A day after the incident, the BJP had raised its pitch demanding action against Mr Geelani and Ms Roy. However, sources said that after taking political opinion, the home ministry decided not to pursue with a formal case against Mr Geelani and Ms Roy.
At a convention on “Azadi — The Only Way”, Mr Geelani had shared the stage with writer-activist Ms Roy and pro-Maoist leader Vara Vara Rao among others. Mr Geelani was also heckled by a few members in the audience and one of them had even flung a shoe at him.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/39343" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-2d9c89c1b6d0dc3e2095a3b988886bb5" value="form-2d9c89c1b6d0dc3e2095a3b988886bb5" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="88364733" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>