12 Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Thursday quashed a criminal case against BJP senior Kailash Vijayvargiya, now a Madhya Pradesh cabinet minister, for "trying to incite violence in Nandigram through fake, misleading posts" during the 2021 assembly polls. The HC ruled that Vijayvargiya was implicated in non-cognizable offences and police can't probe such cases without an order by the judicial magistrate. The HC said a legally faulty start had vitiated the entire probe.
According to the FIR lodged by Nandigram resident Uttam Pramanik on May 3, 2021, he came across a social media post by Vijayvargiya (then the BJP national general secretary in charge of Bengal) that claimed two women were being assaulted and abused by two men allegedly linked to TMC in Nandigram's Kendamari. Pramanik said no such incident had taken place, and the post was fake, only aimed to incite violence. Three days later, the cyber cell lodged an FIR against Vijayvargiya under IPC sections 504/505(1)(b)/120B. Vijayvargiya challenged this FIR in HC.
Arguing that the FIR was illegal, Vijayvargiya claimed in HC that he "always worked within the framework of the law of the land." Calling the case an example of "vendetta politics", he alleged that after the results of the assembly elections were declared, TMC "falsely initiated" this case against him with police help. The state argued that the post had been traced to Vijayvargiya's social media handle. The post was false and malicious, the state said, and only "to disrupt the peace in the locality". The state said that the probe had not been completed and Vijayvargiya's appeal was liable to be dismissed.
In his order, Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta said that the legal maxim saying "initial action by the police authority without following the provision as laid down in the CrPC is bad, all subsequent actions are bad" was squarely applicable in this case. "If proceedings continued in such condition, it would amount to an abuse of process of law," Justice Gupta said and quashed proceedings.