In a major development, the Karnataka High Court has upheld the right of citizens to hold an indoor meeting to discuss the rape and murder of Sowjanya. The organisers had approached the court after the Bengaluru police warned them of “suitable legal action” if they went ahead with the meeting.
Justice M Nagaprasanna disposed of the petition on Tuesday, March 18, effectively permitting the organisers of the meeting to go ahead and preventing the police from precluding the meeting.
Bengaluru city police have in the recent past cracked down on several events and meetings, particularly on the ongoing genocide in Palestine, or any criticism of India’s ties with Israel.
Sowjanya, a 17-year-old college student in Ujire, Dakshina Kannada district, was raped and murdered in 2012. A shoddy investigation led to an acquittal. Throughout, her family and activists who tracked the case closely maintained that the man whom the police caught was made a scapegoat and that the real killers were being protected.
A recent video by YouTuber Sameer MD brought the case back into public conversation, with the Ballari district police booking him for offending religious sentiments.
An indoor meeting to discuss the rape and murder of Sowjanya was scheduled for 5.30pm on Tuesday, March 18, at a hall in Sheshadripuram, Bengaluru.
However, the Sheshadripuram police sent a notice to the organisers via WhatsApp late on Monday night, warning of “suitable legal action” should the meeting go ahead. The notice cited two Karnataka High Court orders to claim that the organisers “could not hold a protest”.
Vinay Sreenivasa, one of the organisers of the meeting, told TNM that they had to approach the High Court simply to hold a meeting because the police had orally told them that they would be taken into preventive detention if they went ahead.
The petitioners told the HC that the police notice was “perverse, mala fide, arbitrary and violative of the petitioners’ fundamental rights”. They also said that the scheduled event was a meeting and not a protest as the police had falsely claimed. They also said that even if a protest was being organised, the police had no authority to regulate the subject of the protest, only the manner in which a protest can be carried out.
“The court has upheld our right to peaceful assembly. It is shocking that the Karnataka home department is trying to prevent people from even holding indoor meetings. For a government that swears by the Constitution, it is unfortunate that there is no space for dialogue even,” Vinay said.
Battle of legal notices
The drama over Tuesday’s meeting comes after a writers’ convention in Bengaluru was cancelled due to a legal notice sent to the venue’s authorities.
The convention, which was to discuss the way forward in Sowjanya’s case, was to be held on March 9 at the Kannada Sahitya Parishat (KSP). It was cancelled after S Rajashekar, a representative of Veerendra Heggade, head of the Dharmasthala temple, sent a legal notice to KSP president Mahesh Joshi.
KSP wrote to activist B Harish Kumar, one the organisers, saying that the parishat was withdrawing permission for the convention as two Karnataka HC orders prohibited the use of phrases such as ‘Justice for Sowjanya’, any discussion about the case, and any commentary on social media.
The letter also said that the VV Puram police inspector had discussed the issue with the Parishat Mahesh Joshi and requested that the event be cancelled. KSP said that the fees paid by the organisers would be refunded.
Harish Kumar has now sent a legal notice to Mahesh Joshi demanding not just answers, but also compensation for damages.
In the notice dated March 15, Harish said that the legal notice that Rajashekar sent to the KSP was on a blank sheet of paper and did not contain his office address or contact information.
He demanded a compensation of Rs 1 lakh for costs borne to organise the event which had been cancelled by the KSP, along with contact details of Rajashekar.
What do the HC orders say?
In the legal notice sent to the KSP, Harish Kumar called the Rajashekar’s claims “not only a hoax by a farce”.
The HC orders cited by the Sheshadripuram police refer to two orders in a writ petition filed by Sheenappa and Nandeesh Kumar Jain in August 2023. Except for the Hindutva activist Mahesh Shetty Thimmarodi, the rest of the nine respondents are government and police officials.
Justice SR Krishna Kumar passed an interim order on July 4, 2024, restricting the police and government officials from permitting Mahesh Shetty Thimarodi to organise any public events in the name of ‘Justice for Sowjanya’ or by any other name. This order was only applicable to the parties mentioned in the case, and not anyone else. The order is no longer in force as the case has been disposed of.
In the final order passed on January 20, 2025, the court directed the police to take action according to the law if Mahesh Shetty made a derogatory statement about which the police were informed.
Quoting the relevant portions of the order, the organisers’ petition said that “it is clear” that the order “does not in any manner authorise the police to act pre-emptively and in the absence of any cogent information that an offence has been committed”.