As the title clearly suggests, this post is about the bail granted to Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati. Before moving on to understand the issue, we need to first know about the Man of the Hour. Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, the 58-year-old head of the powerful Dasna Devi temple in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), was one of several right-wing Hindu leaders who spoke at an event in Haridwar city, where they openly called for violence against Muslims.[1] Apart from this, he had also made severely derogatory remarks against women politicians by calling them mistresses. He has been also accused of several other offences and has almost a total of twenty cases filed against him.

In this particular issue, he was charged under Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and Section 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code. He was taken into judicial custody after the filing of the FIR and subsequently, the Chief Judicial Magistrate, when approached by the accused, denied bail saying that the accused was constantly making comments to incite communal violence.

In 2020, the major riots that took place in North-East Delhi in February and Ujjain, Indore and Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh are the telling signs of the times we live in and the patterns in these riots point towards the over-reach of the authoritarian State in targeting the Muslim community.[2] Communal violence is the violence among groups which differentiate themselves from each other. More than being an issue of lost identities as citizens of a common Nation, it is a major Human Rights problem as well.

Liberty, of faith and worship has been granted to us through our Preamble. Additionally, Article 25 of the Constitution also grants us the fundamental right to freedom of worship unless public order, health or morality gets affected. In the year 1952, there was a case in the hands of the Supreme Court namely State of Bombay v. Narsu Appa Mali[3] and in that case it was held that the mere existence of different personal laws does not violate the non-discrimination and equal protection provisions of the Constitution.[4]

However, times have changed and in this particular issue, Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, after having his bail rejected by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, approached the Sessions Court and was granted bail there even after being a well-recognised repeat offender.