India: Sharp Increase in Use of Colonial Era Sedition Law to Stifle Dissent

By Debdutta Ghosh

There was a national uproar and dismally at the police in Karnataka filing a sedition charges against a Karnataka school management for allegedly allowing students to stage an anti-CAA, anti-NRC drama in which the Prime Minister Narendra Modi was shown in poor light. Sedition charges under Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code was also slapped against the mother of one of the children participating in the drama which was staged on January 21 by students of fourth, fifth and sixth standard of the school. The police filed charges of sedition against the school following a complaint by a social worker on January 26.

The allegation, according to the complaint, against all the accused was that they had “used” the students to organize the drama where the Modi was “abused”.

Sedition charges were also filed in New Delhi against a student activist Sharjeel Imam, on January 28 – who was later arrested in his hometown in the eastern province of Bihar. It has been alleged that he had delivered an inflammatory speech during a pretest organized against the new citizenship law.

And in Mumbai a few days later, the police also slapped the sedition law against 51 protesters alleging that they had shouted slogans in support of Sharjeel Imam.

Police even slapped sedition charges against a minor in Azamgarh in India’s largest province of Uttar Pradesh. The target this time was a 16-year-old boy working as a cleaner at a roadside food stall who allegedly had been involved in rioting during anti citizenship law and anti-NRC protests in the city.

These are but just a few recent examples of the indiscriminate use of Section 124-A of the IPC by the police in various states of India. The slapping of Such charges have been criticized as w ay for the Central government to muzzle dissent – especially against the new citizenship amendment act and the proposed NRC exercise.

Cops are under more scrutiny than before: the police being indiscriminate in slapping sedition charges across India is supported by recently released figures from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which clearly shows an increase in the use of the colonial-era law of sedition over the past few years.

In total, there were 35 such cases registered across India in 2016 which went up to 75 in 2018, according to the latest NCRB data. No data in this regard was available for 2019 and 2020 so far. Critics however claim that the number of sedition charge based cases – especially against people participating in anti-government protests, have gone up sharply in 2019 as well. And a number of such cases have already been filed by police in India within the first one and half months of this year alone.

Here is a year-wise breakup of the total number of sedition cases filed in India since 2015 to 2018.

Year	2015	2016	2017	2018
No. of Cases	30	35	51	75

(Source: NCRB data)

But despite the rising number of sedition cases being filed by the police, the conviction rate is abysmally low. Since 2015, a total of 191 sedition cases had been filed across India. Of these only 43 cases have reached trial stages – the rest are still awaiting police charge sheets to be filed. The police have been able to substantiate the sedition charges in only four cases – where the accused have been convicted by the courts.

In 2015, only dour cases reached trail stage and there was conviction in none of them. The conviction rate – the percentage of people booked under the sedition charges being convicted in court, was just 15.4% in 2018, 16.7% in 2016 and 33.3% in 2017, according to data available in the Crime in India 2018 report by the NCRB

The conviction rate in sedition cases since 2015 is given in the below table:

Year	2015	2016	2017	2018
Conviction rate (%)	0	16.7	33.3.	15.4

(Source: NCRB data)

The low number of sedition cases filed reaching the trial stage shows the incapability of the police to gather enough evidence to back up the charges. And the very poor conviction rates illustrate that most of the the evidence that the police managed to gather in such cases and those that were ultimately presented in court as evidence against the accused did not stand the scrutiny of law.

This apparently seem to support the critics who claim that the sedition act, which was framed by the British in 1837 to suppress dissent against the British crown, is being used in recent years ot suppress dissent and opposing voices against the government.