A Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) in Karnataka’s Tumakuru district on Friday directed the police to register a First Information Report or FIR against actor Kangana Ranaut. This after the court was approached by an advocate named Ramesh Naik L who alleged that the authorities had failed to take action against the actor over her tweet against farmers.
Ramesh had taken objection to Kangana's tweet on September 21 on farmers opposing the Farmers Bills (now Acts) from the Twitter account '@KanganaTeam' on September 20. "Prime Minister, someone who is sleeping can be woken up, someone who has a misconsception can be explained to, but if someone is pretending to sleep, what difference does it make to explain to them? These are the same terrorists, not a single person has gone to the citizenship from CAA but they have spilled blood on the streets” the tweet said.
Ramesh had contended that the same tweet amounts to provoking with the intentions to spark riots and had moved the petition under Section 156(3) of the CrPC or Code of Criminal Procedure which says that any Magistrate empowered under Section 190 may order an investigation by a police officer. He had demanded that the magistrate order than an FIR be registered under Sections 153A (creating disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different by words), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 108 (a person abets an offence) of the Indian Penal Code against the actor.
It may be recalled that many farmers and farmer groups across the country including in Karnataka had staunchly opposed the three laws — Farmer’s Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020; the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020l and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill 2020.
Notably, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), the BJP's oldest ally had quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) over these controversial legislations after party MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal first quit as a minister from the union cabinet.
However, the government went ahead with these legislations despite the opposition and got it passed in the Rajya Sabha controversially through a voice vote when the government was seemingly short of numbers.