M’lore: Saldanha wants sedition laws amended

The Hindu

• ‘Abolish Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958’

 

Mangalore, 15 June 2011: Sedition laws were enacted by the British to suppress Indians during the freedom struggle. These laws should be amended to prevent their misuse, said M.F. Saldanha, retired judge of the Karnataka High Court, here on Tuesday.

 

 

He told presspersons that Parliament should have a serious look at sedition laws, which were being used to target and silence people. He said Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958 had been enforced in parts of the north-eastern States and in Kashmir should be abolished. He said there were several laws already in place to deal with law and order situations and insurgency. Even if the Act had to be invoked, there was no need for it to be imposed for years together. The law had not been challenged in a court for being unconstitutional.

 

Abolition

 

People’s Union for Civil Liberties State president P.B. D’Sa said PUCL had taken up several programmes throughout the country to demand the abolition of the Act. He said the district unit would try to launch a signature campaign here.

 

Research

 

According to a research that he had done for Transparency International, Mr. Saldanha said that 68 per cent of charge sheets filed in courts were related to “unjustified” cases. Because of such cases genuine lawsuits were pending. Mr. Saldanha spoke about the case of a Christian against whom a case of bigamy had been filed, 15 years after his first marriage had been nullified by the church. He said Godwin D’souza had obtained a Decree of Nullity from the Ecclesiastical Court in 2002 and married another woman a year later. But in September 2010, Mr. D’Souza’s former wife filed a case against him alleging bigamy. The former judge said the case should not have been entertained by the court because the judge should have asked for relevant records, but the woman had misled the police and the court by not producing the Decree of Nullity.