The Supreme Court on Monday promised urgent hearing of a public interest plea that has sought a court-monitored SIT probe into the calls for genocide against Muslims sounded at a sadhus’ conclave in Haridwar and a Hindu Yuva Vahini event in Delhi last month.

The PIL has been filed jointly by Anjana Prakash, a former Allahabad High Court judge and currently a senior lawyer, and journalist Qurban Ali.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana asked senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioners, whether any inquiry was going on into the two events.

On being told that FIRs had been registered but no action taken yet, it said the matter would be listed for early hearing.

“Unfortunately, we are living in times when slogans in the country have changed from satyameva jayate (the truth alone triumphs) to shastrameva jayate (weapons alone will triumph),” Sibal told the bench, which included Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli.

At the December 17-19 Dharma Sansad in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, sadhus were caught on video urging Hindus to take up sophisticated weapons and kill Muslims to create a Hindu Rashtra.

Videos from the Delhi event of the Vahini — whose name is similar to that of an outfit current Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath had formed two decades ago when he was an MP — purportedly show youths taking a pledge to “fight, die and kill” to establish a Hindu Rashtra.

Neither the police of BJP-ruled, poll-bound Uttarakhand nor the Centre-administered law-enforcers of Delhi have made any arrests. This lack of action has compelled the petitioners to approach the apex court, Sibal said.

“The aforementioned hate speeches consisted of open calls for genocide of Muslims in order to achieve ethnic cleansing (and)… amount to an open call for murder of an entire community,” says the petition, filed through advocate Sumita Hazarika.

“The said speeches, thus, pose a grave threat not just to the unity and integrity of our country but also endanger the lives of millions of Muslim citizens.”

It adds that the meeting coined the slogan “shastrameva jayate”, “which in the present context would translate into a call for genocide as per the definitions in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to which India is a signatory”.

The petition flags that the Uttarakhand FIRs invoke penal code sections 153A, 295A and 298 — which deal with promoting enmity and hurting religious sentiments and prescribe a maximum sentence of five years — but not the more stringent 121A (conspiracy or attempt to wage war against the country), 153B (imputations prejudicial to national integration) and 120B (criminal conspiracy), where the maximum punishment can be a life term.

The petition says a widely circulated video shows a speaker at the Haridwar event openly claiming a police officer as a supporter of the Dharma Sansad.

“It is submitted that not only the inaction of the police allows delivery of hate speeches with impunity but also shows that the police authorities are in fact hand in glove with the perpetrators of communal hate,” the petition says.

“The contents of the speech feed into an already prevailing discourse which seeks to re-imagine the Indian republic as exclusivist, and that which has no space for other cultures, traditions and practices.”
Such a discourse violates the “constitutional guarantees provided to minority cultures and religions in India”, the petition says.

“The speeches overtly and explicitly described Indian Muslims as usurpers of territory, and as predators of land, livelihoods and of Hindu women, thus creating paranoia and a completely manufactured feeling of being under siege amongst ordinary Hindu citizens,” it adds.