Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju booked for sedition over his Facebook post

NewDelhi,Sept29:Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju has been booked for sedition over his Facebook post in which he wrote that Kashmir should be offered to Pakistan on the condition that it also takes Bihar.

“Pakistanis, let us end our dispute once and for all. We offer you Kashmir, but on the condition that you also take Bihar. It is a package deal. You have to take the package, or none at all….Deal,” Katju wrote on September 25.

Taking this as an insult to his state, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, without naming him, asked whether Katju was the “mai baap” of Bihar.

“Ghar baithe ‘mai-baap’ ban rahe hai Bihar kaa…(trying to become guardian of Bihar while sitting at home),” Kumar said. “A few people are gripped with disease of getting printed in newspaper.”

Katju’s response in another FB post: “Nitish Kumar says that I regard myself as the ‘mai baap’ of Bihar. No Nitishji, I am not the ‘mai baap’ of Biharis but their Shakuni Mama.”

Following the uproar over his remarks, Katju said that he was joking, but chided his critics for not having any sense of humour. The retired judge said that those offended by his post should move the Supreme Court to ban Bihari jokes. “What is wrong with Biharis? Can’t they take a joke,” he wrote.

In a post on September 26, he said that Pakistan had rejected the offer because “the idea of getting Bihar too has horrified them out of their wits.”

When JD(U) General Secretary K.C. Tyagi first suggested that Katju should be booked for sedition, he said, “I have a better suggestion. I should be charged under Lunatics Act.”

“I suggest Biharis take their complaint against me to the U.N. When ‘cheer haran’ of Draupadi was being done, she appealed to Lord Krishna to save her honour,” Katju wrote on Wednesday.

Infuriated by the comments, JD(U) MLC Neeraj Kumar filed a case against Mr. Katju at a Patna police station under Section 124-A (sedition). “We don’t need to move the U.N. The available Indian laws are sufficient to tame the man going out of control. He must be ready to go to Patna’s Beur jail very soon,” said Mr. Kumar.

Patna High Court lawyer Arvind Kumar too filed a petition in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Om Prakash against Mr. Katju and sought registration of a case under Sections 124 (A) (sedition), 500 (punishment for defamation), 501 (printing or engraving matter known to be defamatory) and 505 (statements conducting to public mischief) of IPC.

Katju, also a former chairman of the Press Council of India, was lambasted on social media, with netizens hurling invectives. Some even suggested Pakistan should take him instead of Bihar.

Amit Kumar Tiwari, a netizen, wrote: “Sir, if u r a brahman… cow is your mother and bull is our father, admit it…”

Katju was prompt with an uncanny reply: “And bhainsa (buffalo) is my chacha (uncle).”

The jurist seems to have developed a knack for controversial comments, sparing not even Mahatma Gandhi when he called the father of nation in a 2015 Facebook post “a British agent who did great harm to India”. He also called Rabindranath Tagore a “loyal British stooge” and Subhas Chandra Bose “an agent of the Japanese fascist imperialists”. He eventually apologised.

In a blog, he called Mother Teresa a fanatic and fraud, and then in a series of tweets last year, he said former AAP convener Shazia Ilmi should have been BJP’s candidate for the chief minister’s post in Delhi because she’s “much more beautiful than Kiran Bedi”.

Back in 2012, he wrote “90 per cent of Indians are fools” and that this was “the unpleasant truth” while a year later, he called Pakistan a “fake country”.