Manipuri journalist Kishore Wangkhemcha is full of hope. Again. Wangkhemcha’s optimism was buoyed after the Supreme Court issued notice on two pleas—(Retd) Major General SG Vombatkere and Siddharth Vardarajan, founding editor of news portal The Wire—challenging the constitutionality of Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, 2023 – which most consider to be the “new” sedition law.
This is the second challenge to sedition laws. In 2022, the Supreme Court suspended Section 124 - A of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 on a batch of pleas including those filed by Wangkhemcha, Vombatkere, and Varadarajan - through the Foundation of Media Professionals. In 2023, the Centre introduced the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita to replace the more than a century-old Indian Penal Code - which formed the bulwark of Indian criminal jurisprudence. According to the new criminal laws, which came into force on July 1, 2024, Section 152 of the BNS criminalises any expression that “excites or attempts to excite, secession or armed rebellion or subversive activities, or encourages feelings of separatist activities or endangers sovereignty or unity and integrity of India…”.
In 2022, Wangkhemcha challenged the sedition law before the Supreme Court after the then-N Biren Singh's government in Manipur filed an FIR against him for sharing comments and cartoons on Facebook.
“At the time, when the law (sedition) was put in abeyance, we celebrated,” Wangkhemcha told BOOM. “We were hopeful about the new criminal laws, we anticipated some positive change would come from it. However, we were left disappointed when the new BNS was rolled out and we saw that section 124a was retained, though it was now known as Section 152,” he added.
Wangkhemcha said he couldn’t comprehend the need for Section 152 in today’s times. I can still understand the colonial legacy attached to sedition which was introduced by the British. It must’ve been relevant then. But what about now? One must review whether laws like sedition that directly affect one’s personal liberty are relevant in today’s times,” the journalist said.
Sedition Laws: Section 152 BNS Reincarnation of 124-A IPC
Experts believe Section 152 of the BNS is nothing but a reincarnation of Section 124-A of the IPC with “cosmetic changes”. Section 152 “bears a striking resemblance” to the sedition clause under the IPC, and the Centre re-introduced section 124-A – which was suspended by the Supreme Court in 2022, with a “vengeance”.
Lubhyathi Rangarajan, now a research fellow at SOAS, used to lead a project for news portal Article 14 that tracked sedition cases. “We stopped tracking cases under Section 124-A of the IPC, because at the time the Supreme Court had put it in abeyance”, Rangarajan told BOOM. Rangarajan said they did not continue with the database after Section 152 of the BNS was introduced. “The name of the section may have changed, but 124-A has become 152,” she said.
What is new in Section 152 of the BNS? BOOM asked. “Nothing. It is the same,” Rangarajan replied. “It is the same type of cases by the same type of people against the same type of people,” she added.
“It is the same cases that crop up during India-Pakistan cricket matches, or criticism on social – be it forwarding an article, or a cartoon. The pattern is a copy paste,” the research fellow said. Earlier, it was the Pulwama attack, now it's Operation Sindoor. The events stay the same, only the name changes, she said.
“It is unfortunate, that it is, because this means the legislature has not learnt anything in passing the new criminal law,” Rangarajan said.
Journalist Geeta Seshu says the terminology in Section 152 may have changed, but it has retained the spirit and legacy of the erstwhile sedition law.
Also Read: Law Commission's Version Of Sedition Law Broad, Vague: Say Experts
The original challenger is back
Major General SG Vombatkere retired from the Indian Army in 1996 after 35 years of service. He is 84 years old now, but age has not stopped him from fighting for what’s right. “Just slowed me down a bit,” he told BOOM.
Vombatkere has challenged the sedition law – again. He had also challenged Section 124-A of the IPC and hopes to repeat the success from 2022. “I have always believed in free speech. Even when I was in service. I believe one has a right to express themselves – whether anyone listens to it or not,” Vombatkere said. “Dissent should not be interpreted as disloyalty,” he added.
Vombatkere had shared Wangkhemcha’s sentiment of hope when Section 124-A of the IPC was put in abeyance. “I was glad we were letting go of the IPC,” Vombatkere said. “But after we went through the BNS and saw Section 152, we realized it was ‘sedition on steroids’,” he added.
The ex-army officer said governance is a difficult task, but the government cannot be extreme and must show reasonableness. “I remember 15 years ago, when the Karnataka government charged my friend Dr E Rati Rao – an activist from Mysore, with sedition for objecting to an attack on a church, I was shocked. I found the entire ordeal grossly unfair,” the ex-army officer said.
Vombatkere criticised Section 124-A IPC and said the foundational blocks of Section 152 of the BNS are the same. The ex-major general said it was as though the government believed in “rule by law” and essentially “throws the book” at their critics. Vombatkere pointed at the low conviction rate and said it was simply the process that becomes the punishment.
It is an injustice against the fundamentals of democracy, he added.
Sedition By Another Name Is Equally Suspect: Journalist To SC
On June 29, The Wire published an article about an Indian Defence Attaché who spoke about how the country lost fighter jets during Operation Sindoor – India’s military response to the Pahalgam terror attack. The same day, the article was updated with a comment by the Indian Embassy in Jakarta saying the military officer’s remarks were “taken out of context”.
On August 6, journalist Siddharth Varadarajan got a tip-off from “some well-placed sources” that an FIR was filed against him in Assam on August 11. The source told Varadarajan, that action was planned against him on the night the current Monsoon Session of the Parliament ends - August 21. Varadarajan immediately moved Supreme Court, which granted him relief and interim protection.
In his plea, Varadarajan submits that the complainant is a member and office-holder of Assam’s ruling party, hence, the State’s “deliberate attempt” to target him “cannot be ruled out”. Varadarajan said the FIR was an “abuse of process” and an attempt to “muzzle” the press.
“The new law has additional clauses of secession, armed rebellion, subversive activities, and a term that basically preys on ambiguous sentiments – like “encouraging feelings” of separatist activities,” journalist Geeta Seshu, co-editor of the Free Speech Collective said. “The number of cases already lodged under section 152 and the arrest of Ashoka University professor Ali Mahmudabad Khan tells us that the government is determined to extend the colonial notion of sedition and treason to criminalise dissent as anti-national,” she added.
Sedition Must Be Shield For National Security, Not Sword Against Political Dissent: Rajasthan High Court
Rajasthan High Court in its December 2024 judgement observed that Section 152 of the BNS found its roots in Section 124-A of the IPC.
“It is rather debatable as to which of the two provisions, i.e. the one repealed (sedition) or the one reintroduced, is more stringent,” the high court said while quashing the case against Sikh preacher Tejender Pal Singh who expressed sympathy for Lok Sabha MP and Waris Punjab Da head Amritpal Singh who is currently lodged in an Assam jail on NSA charges.
Justice Arun Monga said one must stay mindful that sedition must be used as a shield for national security and not a sword against legitimate dissent. Laws restricting free speech must be narrowly tailored, he observed. “There must be a direct and imminent connection between the speech and the likelihood of rebellion or secession to invoke such provisions. Legitimate dissent or criticism cannot be equated with sedition or anti-national acts,” the judgement read.
Sedition Law Has Already Had A Chilling Effect
Journalist Geeta Seshu says the Supreme Court’s suspension of section 124-A of the IPC was a result of campaigns led by activists and members of the civil society. There was a lot of constitutional foundation that shaped the laws against sedition at the time it was put in abeyance, she said.
Seshu said the invocation of section 152 against critics and academicians has already had a “chilling effect” because it not only impacts those who have been charged but acts as a warning since others are being more “cautious” now.
Satirists Madri Kakoti and Shamita Yadav better known by their pen names Dr Medusa and Ranting Gola, Bhojpuri singer Neha Rathi, TV star and Big Boss winner Akhil Marar, 20-year-old autorickshaw driver Sahil Khan and Ashoka University Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad faced sedition charges for their social media posts or critical views of the government post the Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor.
In another case, Nagpur police charged Pushpa Sathidar, wife of acclaimed filmmaker Veera Sathidar, with sedition over the recitation of Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s revolutionary poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’ by three persons at an event organized by her.
While Kakoti, Yadav and Rathi faced FIRs for questioning the government’s handling of the Pahalgam attack, Mahmudabad courted arrest when he expressed concern over the celebration of war and said how the “optics” of two women soldiers at the press briefings on Operation Sindoor was important but the same “optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it's just hypocrisy”
“My fear is that apart from the law, which is broad, Section 152 of the BNS gives a weapon to vigilante groups who use their own inferences of what is patriotic and anti-patriotic,” Seshu added. The recent book ban in Jammu and Kashmir is a classic example of what is now considered to be anti-national. In section 152 of the BNS, the net is so wide, it kind of allows anyone to be charged with this. Which is exactly what happened to sedition from 2014 onwards,” the journalist said.
Even One Case Is Enough
The Centre in 2023 introduced the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which replaced the more than a century-old Indian Penal Code that defined Indian criminal jurisprudence since before independence. The new law came into effect on July 1, 2024.
If one must compare, then Section 152 of the BNS is relatively young. So is it too soon to judge? There are mixed opinions. Naveed Mehmood Ahmed, a researcher at think-tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, says it is too soon, whereas Lubhyathi Rangarajan disagrees.
Ahmed feels the only real way to demonstrate intent behind the provision is through how it is implemented. He feels one year is not enough to give judgment. "We can still hope that its application will mark a departure from the patterns of misuse that have defined its past," Mehmood said.
Rangarajan, however, says many spoke against the new criminal laws when the draft bills were made public. “But the push from the government was so strong that it overcame any pushback. There was very little pushback from the judiciary on the new criminal laws,” she said.
Rangarajan said it is not about the number of cases under section 152 if it is the same type of case, same identical law, verbatim, and very little has changed. “Only the operative trigger changes, the event changes, but the cause is the same. Even the people who are charged with sedition typically tend to be from the minority community, or speak against the government,” Rangarajan said.
“How many cases do you want before we talk about it? One case is enough to demonstrate that the law doesn’t work. We don’t have the time to wait for more cases because by then, the damage is done. It is better to nip it off in the bud,” she said.
Rangarajan said that is what even the research demonstrates – you see a pattern and you take decisions accordingly. The government shouldn’t have passed the law, and they did it despite evidence showing that it would go down this road. “It’s a real tragedy that we’re back to where we started. 150 years of having sedition didn’t teach the government anything,” she commented.
Country Facing Extra-Ordinary Times, Section 152 Must Be Viewed As Line of Defence
Senior Advocate Sanjeev Sen has a different point of view. He said in a country as vast, diverse and politically charged as India, the line between free speech and national destabilization its not always “clearly defined”. One may debate the concerns over section 152 BNS, but to paint the government’s use of this law “as an act of authoritarian overreach is to ignore the extraordinary times we live in,” he said.
“India is currently navigating an environment that is in many ways akin to wartime externally with hostile borders and internally with rising ideological fissures. In this sensitive context, speech that explicitly or implicitly attacks the integrity of the state cannot be dismissed as mere dissent,” Sen told BOOM. “Anti-Indian slogans in Meghalaya or the comments following the Pahalgam terror attack would appear to justify or downplay an act of violence against our own forces, are not expressions of protest – they are provocations,” he said. “In such circumstances, the government is not simply entitled to act, but duty-bound to do so,” he added.
Also Read: ‘When They See My Work, They See My Name’: Vikatan Cartoonist On Modi-Trump Satire
Laws Against Personal Liberty Have A Lasting Impact
Kishore Wangkhemcha says it has been four years since he was charged with sedition, but he is still wading through the after-effects.
“There is a kind of taboo associated with being charged with sedition. Does a common person know what sedition really is? To them, and in their understanding, I would be seen anti-national, a “deshdrohi”.
But Wangkhemcha said he was not alone. Most of the people in his circle stood by him but it took a huge toll on my family. “At the time, when I was in jail, our neighbours stopped talking to my family and the people in the locality would talk/ogle/snicker behind our backs,” he said.
Wangkhemcha recalled an incident involving his then seven-year-old daughter. “She was walking home when an acquaintance stopped her on the road and said, ‘oh your father is in jail.’ She was understandably shocked. She told her mother when she came home and asked where I was. She was young and we didn’t tell her I was in jail. She was told I was away for ‘work’ and that I was so busy, that I wouldn’t even be able to make calls. We had tried to shield her from our circumstances,” the journalist said.
Wangkhemcha feels that a lot of the hate that was directed against him was mostly compounded by misinformation fuelled by the IT cell on social media. “Luckily, I didn’t face any hassle in jail. The jails in Manipur are unlike what one would expect in bigger cities or what one sees in the movies. My inmates understood the case against me was false. They respected my word and the bold stance I took against the government at the time. Criticising a political party and the government is not sedition. The inmates in jail with me understood that,” he said.
The Manipuri journalist said the sedition case still characterises him and is an identifier – especially when he critiques government policies. “Yeh tag hamesha lag jaata hai – deshdrohi ka (the tag of an anti-national stays forever),” Wangkhemcha said.