Supreme Court To Hear Pleas Seeking FIR Against Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma On Feb 16

The Supreme Court will hear on Monday (February 16) a batch of petitions seeking the lodging of a first information report and constitution of a Special Investigation Team(SIT) probe against Chief Minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, for the offences relating to hate speech over his comments on 'Miya Muslims' and the 'point blank' video.A bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi will hear the matter.Recently, a video was posted on 'X' by the official handle of the BJP Assam showing the Assam CM shooting persons who appear to belong to the Muslim community. After the video attracted severe backlash from social media users, it was deleted.The petitions that are listed include two filed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Annie Raja, a leader of the Communist Party of India (CPI), seeking action against Sarma over his 'point blank' video and other previous speeches. They also seek the constitution of SIT, contending that the State and the Central agencies can't be expected to carry out the probe impartially. The third petition is filed by four Assamese individuals seeking the Court's urgent intervention over a series of alleged hate speeches by Sarma targeting the Muslim community in Assam. It claims that he used expressions such as “Miya” and “Bangladeshi”, described in the plea as derogatory slurs against Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam, and called for social and economic boycott of the community.The petitioners include Dr Hiren Gohain, a retired professor and public intellectual; Harekrishna Deka, former Director General of Police of Assam; Paresh Chandra Malakar, Editor-in-Chief of Northeast Now; and senior advocate Santanu Borthakur. They contend that the Chief Minister has repeatedly made statements that incite discrimination, social and economic boycott and violence against Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam.Apart from these three petitions, another writ petition was filed by twelve persons, flagging the utterances of the Assam CM, including his comments on 'Miya Muslims', 'flood jihad' etc, and seeking directions to prevent divisive comments by persons holding Constitutional posts.Recently, the Islamic clerics' group Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind also flagged CM Sarma's speech and urged the Supreme Court to issue directions to restrain persons holding Constitutional posts from making divisive comments.Case Details: ANNIE RAJA v UNION OF INDIA AND ORS|W.P.(Crl.) No. 72/2026 and another connected matters

Supreme Court To Hear Pleas Seeking FIR Against Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma On Feb 16

Gursimran Kaur Bakshi

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