The Supreme Court on Friday restrained various state authorities from taking coercive steps against Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan, who is facing multiple FIRs for playing a doctored clip of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a program on July 1.
Granting the interim relief to Ranjan, a vacation bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and JK Maheshwari also issued notices to the Centre and states of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh seeking their responses on Ranjan’s plea.
The apex court gave these orders while hearing Ranjan's plea seeking quashing of FIRs or complaints or their clubbing and transfer to one place.
The petition also sought a direction that no coercive action be taken against Ranjab for the withdrawn programme for which he and the channel have apologised. It also sought security for Ranjan, his family members, and his colleagues associated with the programme in question.
"Today, my difficulty is, the first FIR is in Jaipur, the second FIR is at Raipur in Chhattisgarh," said Ranjan's lawyer, adding an FIR is also there in Noida.
The lawyer further said that an unintentional error was committed in the programme and the petitioner had apologised as well, adding that two concerned persons of the company had accepted their fault and have resigned.
On Tuesday, a police team from Chhattisgarh had reached Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad town to arrest the anchor from his home but he was instead arrested by the Noida police who released him on bail later.
In Raipur, Senior Superintendent of Police Prashant Agrawal had told PTI that a case was registered against Ranjan and others at Zee News on Sunday for allegedly promoting enmity between different groups and outraging religious feelings of people based on a complaint by Congress MLA Devendra Yadav.
In his complaint, Yadav said a video, in which Gandhi described those attacking his Wayanad office as children and said he had no ill-will against them, was "mischievously" used by the TV channel on July 1 to suggest he was forgiving the killers of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal.
The FIR in Raipur was lodged under Indian Penal Code sections, including 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class), 467 (forgery), 469 (forgery to harm reputation), 504 (intentional insult).
On July 2, a day after the video was aired, Ranjan apologised for mistakenly playing Gandhi's statement out of context by linking it with the Udaipur murder case.
"It was a human error for which our team is apologetic. We apologise for it," he had tweeted in Hindi.
(With PTI inputs)
