No coercive action against Raveena, Farah in two more FIRs: HC to police

Chandigarh The Punjab and Haryana high court on Thursday restrained Punjab Police from taking any coercive action against Bollywood actress, Raveena Tandon; director, Farah Khan and comedian, Bharti Singh, booked by Punjab police for allegedly hurting religious sentiments at three different places. The trio had challenged the FIRs, registered in Rupnagar and Ferozepur, and sought quashing of the same.

In January, the high court had passed a similar order in connection with an FIR registered against the trio in Ajnala on December 25, 2019. The FIR in Ferozepur was registered on December 28, 2019, and the Rupnagar FIR was on January 3. Their counsel, Abhinav Sood had argued that the allegations were ‘unjustified, false and incorrect’

Sood told court that Tandon, Farah and Bharti were asked to spell a word and to explain its meaning. While Tandon spelt it correctly, Bharti misspelt it. It apparently meant that Bharti did not know the word and was referring to another word in Hindi, Sood said, adding before court that there was nothing that could lead to the presumption that the act was intended to hurt the religious sentiments of a community.

“The offence for hurting religious sentiments was not made out since it was not a deliberate act from them,” Sood added.

Raveena and Bharti were guests whereas Farah was the anchor of a show telecast on a digital platform, where the alleged comments against a minority community were made in December 2019. The high court bench of justice Sudip Ahluwalia, while issuing notice for March 25, has asked the police not to take any coercive steps.

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The next date of hearing in the case is March 25

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