PUDR flags threat to free political speech, urges release of Andhra civil rights leaders

By A Representative 

The People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) has condemned the arrest of Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) vice-president Kranthi Chaitanya and fellow activist Mohan Krishna, who were taken into custody on January 9 and remanded the next day. The duo has been booked over allegedly “provocative banners” displayed ahead of a civil liberties conference in Tirupati.

According to the FIR, filed on a complaint by the president of the Sanatana Dharma Protection Committee, the banners amounted to offences ranging from promoting enmity between religious groups to criminal conspiracy, breach of peace, obscenity and insulting the Constitution and national symbols. The police invoked multiple provisions, including Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the new clause that replaces sedition.

One banner cited in the complaint announced the “Civil Liberties Union-20th State Conference, Tirupati, January 10–11, 2026” and called for action against “Hindu extremists who are killing rationalists and democrats.” It carried photographs of assassinated rationalists and journalists Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, M.M. Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh. PUDR said the banner highlighted documented violence against dissenters. Investigations in each of these assassinations have linked suspects to Hindutva organisations, including the Sanatan Sanstha. PUDR also noted that persons accused in the Gauri Lankesh and Kalburgi cases who are out on bail were publicly felicitated in Karnataka in February 2025 as “Hindu Tigers.” One of the accused, Shrikant Pangarkar, contested a civic election in Jalna, Maharashtra, on January 15, 2026.

The rights group said the FIR deliberately recasts a political demand—accountability for murders of democrats—as communal provocation. It criticised the additional use of national honour laws triggered by a satirical alteration of the Lion Capital emblem on one of the banners, which replaced lions with bull faces and modified “Satyameva Jayate” to “Satyameva Parajayate” (Defeat of Truth). PUDR argued that the Constitution protects criticism and satire when there is no incitement to violence.

Pointing to judicial precedents, PUDR recalled that cartoonist Aseem Trivedi faced prosecution under sedition laws in 2012 for similar representations of national symbols, before the Bombay High Court ruled that offensive or humourless depictions do not justify curtailing expression without intent to cause disorder (click here). It cited the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India that speech can be restricted only when it incites violence, not merely when it offends (). More recent Supreme Court rulings have reiterated that speech must be judged by the standards of “reasonable persons,” not those who are easily offended or oversensitive, including in cases available here and here.

PUDR said the use of Section 152 BNS, which it describes as broader and vaguer than the sedition clause it replaces, reflects how the law is likely to be deployed to curb dissent. It added that civil liberties organisations face mounting pressure, citing the Bhima Koregaon arrests as an example.

The statement noted APCLC’s decades-long record since its founding in 1974, including exposing extrajudicial killings and playing a key role in a 2009 Andhra Pradesh High Court judgment requiring murder FIRs against police personnel involved in encounter deaths. The organisation’s advocacy, PUDR said, has come at great cost, including multiple activist murders in the 2000s and recurrent arrests and raids.

PUDR said the FIR invokes non-bailable offences carrying a minimum seven-year sentence and warned that the arrests deepen the erosion of democratic freedoms. “These arrests are wholly unjustified and contribute to the rapid erosion of democratic freedoms essential for sustaining a democracy,” it said.

The organisation demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Kranthi Chaitanya and Mohan Krishna.