The Supreme Court particularly the contrasting treatment of influencer-law student Sharmistha Panoli and social media activist Wajahat Khan — have thrown up serious questions about the consistency of the highest court of the land.
At the core of this unfolding controversy is a troubling duality: two individuals accused of the same offence — hurting religious sentiments through social media posts — being treated in fundamentally different ways by the Indian judiciary.
On June 23, the Supreme Court of India stayed any further arrest of Wajahat Khan in FIRs filed outside West Bengal, where he is already in judicial custody. The stay was granted even as the Court acknowledged that Khan’s posts were objectionable and laced with hate speech. Yet, in an almost identical case weeks earlier, the same judiciary remained conspicuously silent when Sharmistha Panoli was arrested in a dramatic cross-state operation, taken from Gurugram (Haryana) to Kolkata (West Bengal), on the basis of a complaint filed by none other than Khan himself.
What began as a hate-speech complaint quickly turned into a case study in legal irony.
In the immediate aftermath of India’s successful military operation, Operation Sindoor, a video shared by Sharmistha Panoli — a law student and Instagram influencer — was widely circulated on social media. Some users, including Khan, alleged that her post hurt Hindu religious sentiments. Khan filed a complaint with the Kolkata Police.
Within days, Kolkata Police tracked Panoli to Gurugram, more than 1,500 kilometers away, and arrested her. This was not done on the basis of multiple FIRs. There was only one complaint, and yet Panoli was arrested and taken across state lines without any apparent intervention or consideration from the Supreme Court.
No pre-arrest protection. No urgent listing. No stay. No consolidation of FIRs — because there weren’t any others at the time.
It was only after public backlash and an outpouring of support from various civil liberties groups that the Calcutta High Court finally granted interim bail to Panoli. But by then, the message was clear: an influencer without political backing, facing her first brush with the law, could be made an example of — swiftly and without high-level judicial reprieve.
Following Panoli’s arrest, social media users began digging through Wajahat Khan’s own posts, many of which were laced with deeply inflammatory content targeting Hindu deities, festivals, and beliefs. The screenshots circulated widely, and FIRs began piling up — this time against Khan — across Assam, Maharashtra, Delhi, and Haryana. The West Bengal police, too, registered two cases. He was arrested in Kolkata and sent to judicial custody.
Now on the other side of the law, Khan approached the Supreme Court, seeking protection from arrests in the remaining FIRs and requesting that all the cases be clubbed and transferred to one jurisdiction.
On June 23, the Supreme Court acted quickly. A bench comprising Justices KV Viswanathan and N Kotiswar Singh stayed any further coercive action against Khan in all FIRs except the two already registered in West Bengal.
The Court went a step further: it also restrained authorities from taking any coercive steps even in potential future FIRs that may arise from the same allegations. The bench issued notices to the Union Government and four states Assam, Maharashtra, Delhi, and Haryana and listed the matter for July 14.
During the hearing, Senior Advocate Dama Seshadri Naidu, appearing for Khan, admitted that the petitioner had posted offensive content but claimed he had deleted the tweets and publicly apologised. He conceded, “He is reaping what he has sown,” but maintained that his client feared for his life due to online threats and was seeking only a consolidated legal process.
Justice Viswanathan, however, did not mince words. He condemned the nature of the tweets and rejected any defence based on free speech. “All hate-mongering,” the judge said, invoking a Tamil proverb: “Wounds inflicted by fire may heal, but not the wounds inflicted by tongue.” But despite these harsh observations, the Court granted Khan sweeping protection.
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