Urdu journalist's sentence set aside

New Delhi, July 3 (UNI) Delhi High Court today set aside a lower court order convicting an Urdu newspaper jounalist on the ground that he had promoted feeling of hatred and dissatisfaction against the Government through his article 24 years ago.

Justice Shiv Narayan Dhingra ruled that the lower court had erred in concluding from the article that it was against the goverment.

The judge said ''I consider that the trial court has wrongly concluded that the caption of the article as a whole promoted feeling of hatred and dissatisfaction towards the Government.

''In fact, the article was against the leader of the political party and not against the Government. The leader happened to be the head of the Goverment,'' the court ruled.

An appeal was filed in the Delhi High Court by Javed Habib, editor of Urdu weekly "Hazoom", challenging his conviction on the ground that he had not committed any offence as it was a fair criticism of the actions of the Government and sought quashing of sessions court orders convicting him of offences under section 505(b),124 A of the Indian Penal Code.

There arose a controversy on an article captioned ''Arrest of Muslims Fighting for their rights-secret government circular'' published in the Urdu daily on November 18-24,1983 and Javed Habib, was sentenced to three years imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 5000.

Setting aside this order, Justice Dhingra ruled that the author expressed his anguish over alleged injustice being done to the Muslims and formed an opinion that Mrs Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India and leader of Congress(I) had formed an opinion that the Muslims did not vote for her and her principals therefore secretly joined hands with leaders like Chaudhry Charan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee to curb the voice of Muslims.

The article depicted that the Congress (I) had total support of RSS in the previous elections and there was a conspiracy between Mrs Gandhi and Vajpayee ruling was the article against the leaders and not against the Government.

The High Court judge quashed the lower court order convicting the author of the article for three years of imprisonment.

UNI