Mumbai: Court said – peaceful protest is a fundamental right in democracy, acquitted five
Describing peaceful movement as a fundamental right in a democracy, a Mumbai magistrate court in 2015 acquitted five women accused of unlawful assembly.
According to the report of Bar and Bench, these women were protesting on the Eastern Free Way of Mumbai demanding regular supply of water in their area. They were taken into custody for stopping the traffic. Two of them are senior citizens. Magistrate RS Pajkar said the police had no reason to act against them.
According to the report, the magistrate said, “Peaceful movement is a fundamental right in a democratic country. The women were protesting as there was no water supply in their area for a few days. The police had sent them home after persuasion, so there was no reason for the police to register an FIR against them and arrest them.
The magistrate also said that the evidence produced by the investigating officer was contradicted by two independent witnesses, there was a delay in registering the FIR and no mention was made of it.
The court also asked why only one woman was arrested. The magistrate said, “It is strange that there were 35 to 40 women there at the time of the incident but the police arrested only one accused woman that day and did not arrest other women.”
The court concluded that the women were protesting peacefully and lawfully and hence there is no ground for registering an FIR against them.
Citizens’ right to protest has been a subject of legal debate since the Supreme Court’s controversial comments on Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh movement in protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and farmers’ agitation on Delhi’s borders to protest against the controversial agricultural laws. .
During the hearing in the Shaheen Bagh case in the year 2021, the Supreme Court had said that protests should be held at certain places only.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kaul, Justices Aniruddha Bose and Krishna Murari said, “Democracy and dissent go hand in hand but protests expressing dissent should take place only at designated places.” The present case is not about the protest being held at one place, but because of it blocking the public road, causing great inconvenience to the commuters. We cannot accept the petitioners’ petition as people can gather to protest peacefully.
In 2021 itself, the Supreme Court reprimanded the farmers protesting against the disputed agricultural laws (now repealed) on the borders of Delhi, saying, ‘You have strangled the whole city and now you want to enter the city. And want to start the protest here too.
