Mumbai: Bombay High Court recently refused to quash an FIR against two persons, including a woman who slapped a Bahujan Samaj Party Rajya Sabha MP on July 17.
“There is no justification for slapping a member of Parliament belonging to a scheduled caste in public view and utterance of those derogatory words,” said Justices Sarang Kotwal and Neela Gokhale on Dec 2, dismissing a petition by Neema Rangari and Sanjay Bhandarkar.
An FIR was lodged by Dadar police against Rangari and Bhandarkar under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and BNS. At the July 17 meeting, Rangari slapped the MP. She and Bhandarkar uttered derogatory words to two scheduled castes persons, saying the party is made up of such people. The FIR, on the complaint by party’s state president Sunil Dongre, said they did this because they did not get tickets to contest Lok Sabha elections.
Advocate Ashwin Thool denied that Rangari and Bhandarkar made the utterances. He said the FIR was not lodged by the MP who was allegedly slapped. Thool referred to Rangari’s July 22 FIR in respect to the same incident at Bhandara and her July 17 non-cognisable (NC) complaint before Dadar police.
The judges said the Bhandara FIR does not refer to the slapping of the MP, while alleging Rs 5 lakh was demanded by two party functionaries. In the Dadar NC complaint, there are allegations of abuse and assault but not of money demand or reference to the MP.
When Thool said the FIR at Dadar is lodged due to political vendetta, the judges stated, “There is sufficient material to indicate that the incident did take place.” They said slapping is an offence under the Act. The incident recorded on CCTV is described in the panchnama. It supports the version in the FIR and of eyewitnesses. “The utterance also targets those particular castes. There are overwhelming circumstances and material against the present petitioners,” they added.
