Allahabad High Court quashes FIR against Mirzapur makers, directors, writers [Read order]

The Allahabad High Court on Friday quashed the First Information Report (FIR) registered against Farhan Akhar and Ritesh Sidhwani, producers of web series Mirzapur, in a case registered against them for allegedly hurting religious, social and regional sentiments through their portrayal of the town of Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh in the web series [Ritesh Sidhwani And Another v. State of UP].

A Division Bench of Justices MC Tripathi and Subhash Vidyarthi also quashed the FIR against Karan Anshuman, Gurmeet Singh, Puneet Krishna and Vineet Krishna who were responsible for the writing and directing two seasons of the show.

"..both the Writ Petitions nos. 851 of 2021 and 1665 of 2021 are allowed. The first information report dated 17.1.2021 registered as Case Crime No. 0016 of 2021, under sections 295-A, 504, 505 and 34 of the IPC and Section 67-A of the IT Act in Police Station Kotwali Dehat, District Mirzapur is hereby quashed." the court held

The court highlighted the fact that there are no allegation in the F.I.R. to make out a case that the petitioners have intentionally insulted and thereby given provocation to any person, intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation will cause him to break the public peace, or to commit any other offence.

"Further, there is no allegation that by making the Series Mirzapur the petitioners with intent to create, on grounds of religion, caste or community or any other ground whatsoever, feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities." the court added

The counsel for the petitioners, Senior Advocate, G.S Chaturvedi submitted that Section 295-A of the IPC does not stipulate everything or anything which offends the religious, regional and social sentiments of the informant to be an offence.

Further it was argued that Section 295-A penalises only those acts of insult or those varieties of attempt to insult the regional or religious belief of a class of citizens which are perpetrated with the deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of that class of citizens.

Import of Section 295-A I.P.C. is to curb speech made with malicious intent and not each and every offensive speech, submitted the counsel for Petitioners.

On the other side, Advocate Rahul Mishra, Advocate, counsel for the informant, submitted that the First Information Report prima facie discloses commission of cognizable offence which needs to be fairly investigated without any intervention by this Court.

Mishra further argued that there is no censorship for the material to be displayed on OTT platform and kids have access to all kinds of media and so it needs to be regulated from breaching the boundaries or else, it, like in the present case, amounts to commission of crime against the society at large.

Sidhwani, the co-founder of Excel Entertainment, which produced Mirzapur, and Akhtar had approached the High Court after an FIR was registered for offences under Sections 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or reli­gious beliefs), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The allegation in the FIR was that the web series portrayed the town of Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh in an indecent and improper manner.

The FIR was lodged on January 17 in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh based on a complaint by one Arvind Chaturvedi who had alleged that ‘certain’ content in the series depicted the town of Mirzapur as antisocial and infested with crime and that the show promotes illicit relationships, portrays a polluted picture of the legal and judicial system.

The portrayal of Mirzapur in the show in such a manner is far away from reality of life in Mirzapur. As such the show "has hurt his sentiments”, the complainant had stated.

The producers had initially approached the High Court challenging the FIR, followed by the directors and writers.

In challenging the FIR, the petitioners had pointed out that the series was purely a work of fiction, which was also clarified by way of a disclaimer at the start of each episode. It was pointed out that the said disclaimer also stated that the makers of the show respect all faiths and religions and that all places and events in the said series are completely fictional.

After placing reliance on various decisions and arguments tendered by the parties, the court quashed the FIR against the producers, makers of Web series, Mirzapur.

"In view of the aforesaid discussion, the Court is satisfied that as per the averments made in the impugned F.I.R., no offence under Sections 295A, 504 and 505 of the Penal Code and Section 67 A of the IT Act is made out. 34. The present case falls under categories (1) and (3) mentioned in para 102 of the judgment of the Hon’ble Supreme Court in the case of State of Haryana versus Bhajan Lal (Supra) and it is liable to be quashed."

Earlier this year, the court had granted interim protection to the petitioners by way of two separate orders.

The matter was argued by Senior Advocate Manish Tiwary, Senior Advocate Gopal Chaturvedi, assisted by Advocates Imran Ibrahim, Jay Kumar Bhardwaj, Priyadarshini Arora and Soumya Chaturvedi for petitioners.

[Read order]