Sanatana Dharma row: SC tags plea for FIR against Udhay with pending petition

The Supreme Court on Wednesday tagged a plea, which has sought registration of an FIR against Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin over his “eradicate Sanatana Dharma” remark, with another similar pending petition.

A bench of justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi was hearing a plea seeking direction for the registration of a First Information Report (FIR) against Udhayanidhi Stalin and DMK leader A Raja for their comments on Sanatana Dharma.

On September 22, the top court had agreed to hear a separate plea filed by Chennai-based lawyer B Jagannath seeking registration of an FIR against Udhayanidhi Stalin and others over his “eradicate Sanatana Dharma” remark, which the petitioner likened to hate speech.

The plea filed by Delhi-based advocate Vineet Jindal came up for hearing before the bench on Wednesday. “We will not issue notice but we will tag it,” the bench told the counsel appearing for the petitioner.

The lawyer appearing for TN argued that the plea was a “public interest litigation in the nature of publicity interest litigation”.