New Delhi, March 26: The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a Public interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a direction to the Centre for withdrawal of all criminal cases lodged against 95-year-old artist MF Husain and ensuring his return to the country.
Husain has over 95 cases registered against him in different parts of the country for his alleged blasphemous paintings of Hindu Gods and Goddesses. Husain, in self-imposed exile outside India since 2006, was recently conferred citizenship by Qatar.
Dismissing the PIL, Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan said, “Cant’s do anything about these individual complaints.” The Chief Justice, however, pointed out that all the cases against the artist have earlier been transferred to Delhi.
The PIL by Bhim Singh, a member of National Integration Council and former MP, had claimed Husain’s fundamental rights stood violated as he was unable to return to the country due the 900-odd cases slapped against him.
The PIL had argued that Husain, who enjoys an iconic status, travels freely across the world except India where “he faces legal harassment and physical threat, with the system impotent and not committed to enabling his return.”
The PIL citing media reports said there were 95 cases registered in different parts of the country by “the persons associated with the same political party.”
The PIL recalled an earlier Supreme Court observation in connection with one of the cases against Husain that no exception should be taken to such artistic expressions.
“Does the sentiment of the petitioner get scandalised by the large number of photographs of erotic sculptures which are in circulation?,” the PIL quoted an earlier purported observation of the apex court during the hearing of a criminal case against Husain.
“While being a rare honour, Mr Husain’s impending change of nationality brings to a close one of the sorriest chapters in independent India’s secular history,” the PIL said
“I know no one more genuinely and deeply committed to the composite, multi-religious, and secular values of Indian civilisation than M F Husain. He breathes the spirit of modernity, progress and tolerance,” Singh in his petition claimed.
The apex court’s refusal to get involved in the pending cases against him surely comes as a setback for Husain. He has, more than once, indicated that he wants to come back to India.
–Agencies