No interim relief for Sharjeel Imam

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday denied anticaa activist Sharjeel Imam interim relief in multiple sedition cases filed against him and said that it “cannot pass interim orders” without going through submissions made by the states which have decided to file cases against the JNU student. At least five states — Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh — have filed sedition cases against Sharjeel for speeches that were allegedly inflammatory in nature.

The top court noted that while Delhi and UP had filed their replies in the plea to consolidate all the FIRS into one case, the north-eastern states were yet to file a reply in the matter and posted the matter for three weeks later.

“We cannot pass interim orders without seeing the

Supreme Court defers hearing by three weeks

replies of other states,” a bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and V Ramasubramanian said. “We will give time,” said the bench, granting the three states a time of two weeks to file their replies and an additional one week’s time for a rejoinder to be filed.

Senior advocate Siddharth Dave, appearing for the petitioner, told the court that all these cases lodged against Imam should be consolidated. Interestingly, Sharjeel’s lawyers had cited the Arnab Goswami judgement by the Supreme Court, which had held that FIRS in multiple states for the same alleged incident of offence is not maintainable and should be consolidated.