Supreme Court rejects 100 per cent cross verification of EVM votes with VVPAT slips
The top court also rejected the prayers of petitioners to return to ballot paper voting system, calling it foible and unsound.
In major relief to actress Priya Prakash Varrier, the Supreme Court has stayed the FIR lodged against her and the director of the movie for ‘hurting religious sentiments’ of Muslims.
The top court has stayed all criminal proceedings against the actress, director and producer of the film. The FIR had alleged that a song in the movie hurts the sentiments of Muslims.
On Monday, Priya, who stole the heart of the nation with her cute antics in a song of an upcoming Malayalam movie, had moved the Supreme Court seeking to quash the FIRs.
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Some Muslim activists had lodged an FIR against the team of “Oru Adaar Love” in Hyderabad under Section 295A (hurting religious sentiments) of the Indian Penal Code on February 14.
A group in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad also filed a police complaint against Varrier and Lulu on the same grounds.
On Monday, Varrier’s counsel Pallavi Pratap told the apex court that the criminal complaints instituted by “various fringe groups” are based on a “distorted and incorrect interpretation of the song”.
“The claims that it hurts the religious sentiments of the Muslim community are without any basis,” it said.
Stressing that an amount of Rs 1.5 crore has been spent on the movie, the plea said: “such flimsy and baseless complaints and FIRs cause nothing but a hindrance to freedom of speech”.
The contentious scene where Varrier winks at a boy features the Mappila lyrics — a traditional Muslim song from the Malabar region of Kerala — that celebrate the love between Prophet Mohammed and his first wife Khadija.
The complainants had objected to the use of Mappila as background music in the flirting scene.
(With IANS inputs)
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