A group of students had performed a skit featuring a man from a lowered caste background attempting to date a dominant caste woman, making controversial wordplays including altering Ambedkar’s name to “Beer Ambedkar.”
The Karnataka High Court has quashed criminal proceedings against seven students and two faculty members of Jain (Deemed-to-be) University’s Centre for Management Studies (CMS), over a skit they performed during a college festival, which was allegedly derogatory towards BR Ambedkar and Dalit communities. The case, based on a complaint filed by the Social Welfare Department, accused the participants of promoting caste discrimination and violating laws related to hate speech and atrocities against Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) communities.
Justice SR Krishna Kumar, in his order, ruled that the charges under sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups), 149 (unlawful assembly), and 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), as well as sections 3(1)(r)(s) and (v) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, did not hold up under legal scrutiny. The court said the necessary elements constituting these offences were absent, particularly as the skit did not appear to have been performed with intent to insult or harm any specific community.
