The Supreme Court Tuesday granted interim protection from arrest to a female lawyer, who was accused of sedition and waging war against the country after she claimed to have accompanied a fact-finding team to inquire into the violence in Manipur.
Appearing for lawyer Deeksha Dwivedi, senior advocate Siddhartha Dave asked a bench led by Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud to grant a stay on her arrest.
He said a case has been registered against her after she addressed a press conference and two of the offences alleged against her carried the life imprisonment as the maximum penalty.
It was not possible to approach the Manipur High Court amid the prevailing situation in the state, he said.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, however, contended that it was not appropriate to claim that approaching the high court was not possible.
He told the court that senior advocate Colin Gonsalves had previously appeared in a similar case before the high court.
The court, however, asked Mehta to serve a copy of the FIR upon the petitioner.
Before putting the lawyer's writ petition for hearing on July 14, the bench, also comprising Justices P S Narasimha and Manoj Misra, directed that in the meanwhile, no coercive steps should be taken against the petitioner.
In her plea advocate Dwivedi contended that she had accompanied a two-woman team from the National Investigation Forum for Women (NIFW) as an independent lawyer and observer, and in the first week of July, a press conference was held after the inquiry was completed and a press release was issued.
After this, an FIR was registered against her and others, CPI leader and National Federation of Indian Women General Secretary Annie Raja and Nisha Siddhu, for sedition, defamation etc by the Manipur police. The lawyer claimed that contents of the press release were not seditious nor did they attract the other offences alleged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code.
It was reported that a complaint was filed by S Liben Singh after the accused termed the Manipur violence as "state-sponsored".