The Supreme Court on Wednesday stated that the Special Investigation Team’s probe into comments made by Ashoka University Associate Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad about the press briefings on Operation Sindoor should be limited to the two first information reports filed against him, reported Live Law.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and Dipankar Datta said that the investigation report should be produced before the top court before being filed in the jurisdictional court.

It added that the interim protection granted to the professor would continue till further orders.

Two cases have been filed against Mahmudabad, who heads the political science department at Ashoka University, for his comments about the media briefings on the Indian military operation against terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir initiated in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam attack.

One of the cases was filed based on a complaint by Yogesh Jatheri, general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Yuva Morcha unit in Haryana.

The second case was filed on the basis of a complaint by Renu Bhatia, the chairperson of the Haryana State Women’s Commission.

Mahmudabad was arrested on May 18 and was sent to judicial custody on May 20.

On May 21, the court granted interim bail to the professor. However, it declined to halt the investigation against him. It also instructed the Haryana director general of police to form a special investigation team to look into the meaning of the words used by Mahmudabad.

Additionally, he was barred from posting or publishing any content related to the social media posts under scrutiny, and directed not to comment on the Pahalgam terror attack and India’s subsequent military response.

During the hearing on Wednesday, advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Mahmudabad, told the court that the Special Investigation Team constituted by the Haryana government may expand its probe, according to Live Law.

Sibal also noted that the authorities were seeking access to Mahmudabad’s digital devices.

In response, Kant said that the FIRs were already part of the record. “What is the need for devices?” Live Law quoted him as having asked the Haryana government. “Do not try to expand the scope. SIT is free to form opinion. Do not go left and right.”

The professor was also seeking to set aside the conditions imposed by the court while granting him interim bail, Bar and Bench reported.

The bench stated that the restriction was only with respect to making posts and comments on the FIRs against him.

“See, he can write and speak,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as having said. “No reservations. But only not with regard to subject matter of investigation.”

It refused to pass any direction on Khan's request and listed the matter for July.

Mahmudabad faces charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to acts prejudicial to maintaining communal harmony, making assertions likely to cause disharmony, acts endangering national sovereignty and words or gestures intended to insult a woman’s modesty, among others.

What Mahmudabad said

On May 8, in a social media post, Mahmudabad had highlighted the apparent irony of Hindutva commentators praising Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, who had represented the Army during the media briefings about the Indian military operation

“Perhaps they could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hate mongering be protected as Indian citizens,” he had said.

Mahmudabad had said that the optics of the press briefings by Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh were important, “but optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it’s just hypocrisy”.

The Haryana women’s panel had accused the professor of attempting to “vilify national military actions”. Renu Bhatia said that he ignored the panel’s summons on May 14. She further said that when the commission visited the university on May 15, he did not appear before it.

Mahmudabad, however, said that he only exercised his fundamental right to freedom of speech in order to promote peace and harmony.

The professor maintained that his remarks had been “completely misunderstood” by the commission and that its notice failed to highlight how his posts were “contrary to the right of or laws for women”.

Also read: