Lawfare/Arrests – Others

Munawar Faruqui, 30, was arrested on 1 January in the central Indian city of Indore just as one of his shows ended. He is accused of “insulting” Hindu religious sentiments in jokes that he had allegedly prepared, although they did not appear in his set that night. The Muslim comedian is among many who have recently been accused under a law that protects religious beliefs.

“He was arrested for jokes he didn’t crack. A presumption of and anticipation of a so-called criminal act cannot be an offence. The police registered a case and arrested him without verifying the facts,” Anshumaan Shrivastava, the comic’s lawyer, told the BBC’s Soutik Biswas recently. Even police later said they had no evidence that the comic had insulted Hindu gods – and the charge was based on the complainant overhearing “some jokes” the comic had been preparing for the show.

The complainant was Eklavya Gaud, the son of a politician from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is also in power in Madhya Pradesh state, where the arrest happened.