On January 17, the Gujarat High Court rejected the petition of Congress MP Imran Pratapgarhi. The Congress MP requested the court to quash the FIR lodged against him in Jamnagar earlier this month for allegedly posting an edited video with a provocative song.
During the petition hearing, Justice Sandeep N Bhatt said, “Looking at the tenor of the poem, it certainly indicates something about the throne. The responses received to the said post by other persons also indicate that the message was posted in a manner which certainly creates a disturbance in social harmony…”
The order stated that citizens of this country should “behave” in a way which doesn’t disturb communal and social harmony. The order further reads, “…the petitioner, who is a Member of Parliament, is expected to behave in some more restricted manner as he is expected to know more about the repercussions of such a post,” the order stated.
What is the case?
On January 3, a case was registered against Pratapgarhi for allegedly posting an edited video with a poem “ae khoon ke pyase baat suno…” running in the background of a mass marriage ceremony organized in Jamnagar city. The accused also include Altaf G. Khafi, a local Congress official, and Sanjari Education and Charitable Trust, an NGO.
Imran Pratapgarhi, the national chairman of the Congress minority cell, was charged in the FIR after sharing a 46-second video clip of a mass wedding he had attended in Jamnagar on December 29 on his X Twitter. In the video, he was seen waving his hands in the throng while showering with flowers.
Kishan Nanda, a Jamnagar resident, reached the police station and filed an FIR, claiming that Imran Pratapgarhi had used a song that was provocative and detrimental to national integrity. Following this, Imran Pratapgarhi, through counsel Syed, petitioned the high court to dismiss the FIR, claiming that the poem on which the FIR was filed “is a poem spreading a message of love.”
The public prosecutor defended the FIR, stating that “the words of the poem clearly indicate the rage to be raisedagainst the throne of the state” and, therefore, “prima facie a case is made out.”
This is not the first time that Imran Pratapgarhi’s communal agenda has come to light. Previously, he has praised a well-known criminal, Atiq Ahmad from Uttar Pradesh, as his brother and teacher. Imran Pratapgarhi not only cited poems for him in his Poem concerts (Mushayra) but also used to write for him.
Imran’s poems often try to instigate the Muslim community and cause communal tensions. In a video from 2019, Imran Pratapgarhi encourages Muslims to kill 4 to 6 people to avenge the deaths of their people. “It is not acceptable to die in a cowardly manner. To avenge a lynching, kill at least 4 to 6 people before dying”, he adresses. Imran Pratapgarhi is a serial offender when it comes to disturbing communal and social harmony.
