Offering prayers for a dead militant does not amount to instigating members of any community or creating public disorder, the Himachal Pradesh High Court said recently.

A bench of Justice Sandeep Sharma was hearing a petition by one Tahseen Gul, who was seeking quashing of a first information report registered against him in 2019 when he was a student at Chitkara University.

On February 16, 2019, the police booked Gul for his Facebook post praying for a militant who had died in a gunfight with security forces.

Gul was booked for promoting disharmony or hatred between religious, racial, linguistic or regional groups under Indian Penal Code section 153(B).

Hearing the case on June 13, the High Court said: “Had petitioner after death of militant named hereinabove instigated people to lodge protest against the administration and other police authorities, or had he made appeal to others to join the movement, he could be said to have been committed offence under Section 153(B) of IPC.”

The court quashed the FIR against Gul, stating that his social media post mentioning that he would miss the militant did not amount to instigating enmity.

Sharma also said that through his social media post, Gul “no doubt … can be said to have made an attempt to glorify the acts and deeds of [the] militant”. “But such attempt or effort, if any, cannot be said to be a crime/offence, as is covered under Section 153(B) of IPC,” the court held.

Additional Advocate General Rajan Kahol had argued that the petitioner’s social media post glorified the militant and could potentially create unrest within society.

Kahol had told the court that offering prayers for a militant and expressing personal loss amounted to supporting militancy, Live Law reported.