CBI Registers Case to Investigate Alleged Offensive Posts Against Andhra HC & SC Judges

(Judicial Quest News Network)

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered an FIR against 16 individuals for allegedly defaming judges of the Supreme Court and the Andhra Pradesh High Court on social media.

The CBI move came after the Andhra Pradesh High Court on October 12 directed the agency to probe the role of the persons occupying high positions and associated with the Government for allegedly being involved in waging war against the judicial system in the State of Andhra Pradesh.

The accused have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) including section 153A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), 505 (inciting a community), 506 (criminal intimidation) and section 67 of Information Technology Act.

According to the CBI FIR, the key persons who were occupying posts of prominence in Andhra Pradesh, by intentionally targeting the judges, made interviews/posts/speeches attributing motives of casteism and corruption against some of judges of the Supreme Court and the high court in delivering orders/judgements.

These people, as per the FIR, posted abusive, life-threatening and intimidating posts against the judges on Facebook, Twitter over recent judgments delivered by the judges of the Andhra Pradesh HC.

The CBI took over 12 cases which were initially being probed by the state CBI. These will now be probe together due to the similarity among them.

The High Court while entrusting the probe to the CBI had observed that since April 2020, a new trend had developed in the State of Andhra Pradesh to abuse the High Court and its Judges on different social media sites and even in interviews given to the electronic media.

[Read FIR Here]