‘Sedition’ as Tyranny

Dr Rati Rao, vice-president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka, received a police notice on 26 February informing her that a case of sedition (Section 124-A) had been registered against her for publishing a bulletin that the complaint alleged was ‘favouring Naxals and Muslims’ and ‘propagating that the police are killing innocent people in the name of encounters’. She spent the next nine months realising how the State had exacted its punishment, even though no chargesheet was filed against her.