Climate of treason

Apex court should order scrapping all sedition cases

The Supreme Court’s verdict quashing the sedition case against TV anchor Vinod Dua has been widely praised for upholding the principle of journalists’ basic right to criticise or comment on the government. The apex court has underlined the fact that every journalist is entitled to protection and every detention or FIR “is subject to the law laid down earlier”. The court was referring to the frequently quoted ambit of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as laid out in the 1962 case Kedar Nath Singh versus the State of Bihar, which stated that spoken or written words that