NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday told a Congress sympathiser and Youtuber journalist Abhisar Sharma that it cannot entertain his plea challenging validity of an FIR lodged by Assam Police, but provided four weeks interim protection to approach the Gauhati High Court.
"Why are you bypassing the High Court? We will give you protection you go to the High Court. Just because you’re a journalist, we can't entertain," a bench of Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh told senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for him.
The court declined to consider his challenge to the validity of the FIR lodged by Assam police over his criticism of the state government on allotment of 3,000 bighas of land to a private company.
While granting him interim protection of arrest for a period of four weeks, the court tagged his plea challenging validity of sedition provision under Section 152 of the BNS for considering along with a pending petition.
The court also issued notice to the Union government on his plea on challenge to Section 152 BNS.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioner, submitted Section 152 BNS was being used as omnibus provision.
The court, however, asked him to challenge the FIR before the High Court.
Sibal said, there should be some uniformity as the court had earlier granted protection to other journalists. He was indicating to the cases of Siddharth Varadrajan and Karan Thapar.
Sibal said the police may lodge another FIR.
On this, the bench said, "Even if we entertain, they can still lodge another FIR."
Sibal then said, "Society looks up to this court. Please don’t do this. Please. This is not done. What message are we sending?"
The court, however, said it was not inclined to lodge the FIR.
On August 18, 2025, the petitioner claimed he posted a video on his YouTube channel titled “When the judge reprimanded the BJP government! Why thousands bigha land to Adani?”
The petitioner claimed he questioned the wisdom of allotting 3,000 bighas of tribal land to a private entity viz. Mahabal Cements, and exposed government decisions that affect tribal land rights, environmental concerns, and democratic accountability.
On August 21, 2025, the FIR was registered at PS Crime Branch, District Guwahati under Sections 152, 196 and 197 BNS, 2023, against the petitioner on the basis of a private complaint against the YouTube video.
His plea claimed he merely exercised his fundamental right to freedom of speech and press by reporting and critically commenting on political speeches already in the public domain.
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