The Supreme Court on Tuesday said that courts are not supposed to do moral policing, as it set aside the Punjab and  Haryana High Court’s 2019 order imposing Rs 10 lakh costs each on musician Vishal Dadlani and political activist Tehseen Poonawalla over the certain tweets they had posted in 2016 mocking a Jain monk.

Setting aside the High Court order imposing cost while quashing criminal proceedings against the two – Vishal Dadlani and Tehseen Poonawalla, a bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan said, “What kind of order is passed by the court? The court is not supposed to do moral policing. This is not the function of the court at all.”

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The top court bench further said that the High Court should not have imposed costs on Poonawala and Dadlani after holding that no offence was made out against them and upholding their fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution.

“We are of the view that after finding that absolutely no offence was made out when exercising jurisdiction under Section 482 of the CrPC, High Court ought not to have exercised advisory jurisdiction by telling the appellant that the contribution made by the priest was much more than what the appellant and the other accused have contributed. Function of the court is not to do moral policing,” the top court said today.

Setting aside the High Court’s direction to pay costs, the top court said, “Perhaps High Court was swayed by the fact that the appellant and the other accused made criticism of a priest of a particular religion.”

The top court said this in the course of the hearing of a petition by Tehseen Poonawalla against the 2019, Punjab and Haryana High Court order that while quashing the criminal case filed against them, imposed costs on them for having allegedly insulted Jain saint Tarun Sagar on Twitter and hurt the sentiments of the followers of the Jain religion.

The High Court imposed the cost so that in future they may not mock any head of a religious sect for publicity on social media.

The case arose from Dadlani’s tweets criticising priest Tarun Sagar’s nude appearance and the Haryana government’s action of calling him to the Legislative Assembly.

Poonawala posted a photoshopped image of a semi-nude woman alongside the Jain saint and raised a question about societal standards.