The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to comedian Samay Raina and four others on a petition claiming that they had made insensitive jokes about persons with disabilities, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh asked the Mumbai Commissioner of Police to serve notice to all five of them and ensure their presence in court on the next date of the hearing. It added that coercive action would be taken if they failed to appear.

The notice was issued on a writ petition filed by a non-government organisation called Cure SMA Foundation, which raises awareness and provides support for patients with spinal muscular atrophy. The bench sought the assistance of Attorney General R Venkataramani in the matter, PTI reported.

Apart from Raina, the others summoned were Vipun Goyal, Balraj Paramjeet Singh Ghai, Sonali Thakkar aka Sonali Aditya Desai and Nishant Jagdish Tanwar, according to Live Law.

The NGO had initially brought the matter to light through an intervention application filed in another case related to sexually explicit remarks made by YouTuber and podcaster Ranveer Allahbadia during an episode of the show India’s Got Latent, hosted by Raina, in February.

The court had said that it intended to do something to regulate obscene content on YouTube and other social media. It had further asked the Union Government about its views on the matter.

Cure SMA Foundation had stated that existing regulations required adequate and explicit protections to shield persons with disabilities from “disabling humour”, which was denigrating, demeaning and disparaging to them, Live Law reported.

At the same time, such regulations should also not restrict disability humour, which challenged conventional wisdom about disability, it said.

On April 21, the court suggested that the NGO could file a comprehensive petition impleading the persons who had made such remarks and suggest measures.

“This is very very serious issue,” Live Law quoted Kant as saying. “We are really disturbed to see that. We would like [you] to place on record the instances also. If you have video-clippings along with transcript, bring them.”

Subsequently, the NGO filed the petition that the court heard on Monday

During the hearing, Senior Advocate Aparajita Singh, representing Cure SMA Foundation, claimed that since Raina and others in the matter were influencers, their words held weight among the youth, Live Law reported.

The freedom of speech and expression did not extend to defaming vulnerable persons, Singh said. The right to free speech under Article 19(1)(a) should be held in balance with another person’s right to dignity, she added.

“This is very, very damaging and demoralising,” PTI quoted the bench saying in response. “There are statutes which try to bring these people into the mainstream, and with one incident, the entire effort goes. You [Singh] should think of some remedial and punitive action within the law.”

The court also said that the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression was not absolute and that no one could be allowed to demean anybody under its garb, according to the news agency.