An Indore-based cartoonist booked for depicting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in an allegedly undignified manner told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that he will publish an apology on social media, Bar and Bench reported.

A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and NV Anjaria was hearing a petition filed by the cartoonist Hemant Malviya, seeking anticipatory bail in the case registered against him in Madhya Pradesh.

“I have already placed the apology according to the earlier order,” Bar and Bench quoted advocate Vrinda Grover, representing Malviya, as having told the bench. “I want to make an additional statement that it [the caricature] will be deleted from all social media platforms even though the case pertains to the Facebook post.”

Grover added: “I will publish the apology on my social media account as well.”

Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj, for the Madhya Pradesh government, said that the post should not be deleted because of the ongoing investigation.

Nataraj added that the apology should be published on social media with an undertaking that the cartoonist would not indulge in the same again.

The bench said that Malviya should publish the apology within 10 days and extended the interim protection from arrest granted to him till the next hearing.

On July 15, the Supreme Court had granted the cartoonist interim protection from arrest but cautioned that if he continued to share allegedly offensive posts on social media, the Madhya Pradesh government was free to take action against him.

The order had come after Malviya submitted an apology for his social media post. The bench had also directed the cartoonist to file the apology in Hindi as an affidavit.

A day earlier, the cartoonist had agreed to delete the post after being criticised by the Supreme Court.

Malviya had moved the top court challenging a Madhya Pradesh High Court order that denied him anticipatory bail in the case.

The High Court in its July 3 order observed that Malviya had “clearly overstepped” the limits of free speech and misused his right to expression. It held that the cartoonist had failed to exercise discretion while publishing the caricature and held that his custodial interrogation was necessary.

The case

Malviya had published the original cartoon on January 6, 2021, which depicted Modi as a doctor administering an injection to a man dressed in what may have appeared to some as the uniform of the RSS.

The RSS is the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

It was accompanied with the Hindi caption: “Why are you worried? Serum’s Poonawala has said that the vaccine only has water, you won’t die from the side effect of water!”

This was a reference to Serum Institute of India’s Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla alleging that many Covid-19 vaccines in the market were only as effective as water.

According to the High Court order, a Facebook user had republished the cartoon, but replaced the caption with one in which the man in the purported RSS uniform addresses Modi as an incarnation of the Hindu deity Shiva and asks to be injected with such a strong dose of the caste census in his buttocks so that he forgets the Pahalgam terror attack and the contentious Waqf Act, among other matters.

Malviya had shared the altered version of his cartoon on Facebook on May 1, writing that anyone could use any of his cartoons by writing their own names and captions. All his cartoons were for the public, by the public and dedicated to the public, he said.

He added that the altered cartoon was shared with him by a friend and that whoever had created the caption had written well.

Based on this, a RSS member had filed a complaint, alleging that Malviya had posted objectionable content on Facebook that defamed the Hindutva organisation and hurt religious sentiments.

Malviya was booked in May under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Information Technology Act pertaining to promoting enmity between groups, acts intended to outrage religious feelings, intentional insult and electronically publishing or transmitting material containing sexually explicit acts.

Malviya has argued that he was falsely implicated in the case and that his work was merely satire. He also said that the comments about the caricature on Facebook were not his own, and therefore, he could not be held responsible for them.

Also read: Why MP High Court ordered a cartoonist to be arrested for lampooning Modi and RSS

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