FIR over remarks on PM, how law treats obscenity and profanity

Why in the News

The Noida Police registered a Zero FIR against a 25 year old protester over remarks about the Prime Minister during the July youth protests, invoking sections covering insult, public mischief and defamation rather than obscenity. The case surfaces a legal distinction courts have sharpened over six decades: crude or profane language is not automatically the same offence as obscenity, and each carries its own, narrower evidentiary bar.

How has India’s legal test for obscenity evolved?

1. Ranjit D. Udeshi v State of Maharashtra, 1965: The Supreme Court upheld a ban on D H Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover and adopted the 1868 English Hicklin test, which asked whether isolated passages of a work could corrupt the most vulnerable reader.
2. Doordarshan v Anand Patwardhan, 2006: The Supreme Court cleared the broadcast of a documentary that had been denied airtime over its adult certificate, holding that obscenity must be judged by viewing a work as a whole, not by isolating individual scenes.
3. Aveek Sarkar v State of West Bengal, 2014: The Supreme Court discarded the Hicklin test in favour of a community standards test, holding that material is obscene only if it tends to arouse sexual feelings when judged by an average person applying contemporary standards.

What is Section 296 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita?

1. Section 296, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS): The successor to Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code, this is the default charge for loud, obscene public behaviour, punishing obscene acts or words uttered in or near a public place to the annoyance of others, with up to three months in jail.

Why is profanity not the same as obscenity?

1. College Romance ruling, 2024: The Supreme Court quashed an FIR against a web series over an expletive-heavy episode, holding that vulgarity and profanity are not, by themselves, the same as obscenity, since crude words in common usage reflect emotions such as anger or frustration rather than arousing sexual feelings.
2. Sivakumar v State, April 2026: The Supreme Court acquitted a man under Section 294 for calling someone a slur during a heated argument, holding it did not meet the threshold for obscenity.
3. Mani v State, July 2026: The Supreme Court held that swear words, profanities and vulgar expletives, however distasteful, cannot be equated with obscenity, since obscenity requires a showing that the utterance was lascivious.

What does the Noida FIR actually need to prove?

1. Section 352, insult: This requires proof that the accused intended, or knew it was likely, that the insult would provoke an actual breach of public peace, not merely that someone felt insulted.
2. Section 353(1), public mischief: This section targets incitement, such as inciting mutiny, fear likely to push people toward offences against the state, or enmity between communities, a considerably higher bar than sharp criticism of a leader.
3. Section 356(1), defamation: Defamation carries long standing exceptions for good faith comment on a public figure’s conduct in their public role.

Conclusion

Six decades of Supreme Court rulings have progressively narrowed what counts as obscenity while explicitly separating it from mere vulgarity or profanity. The Noida case will test whether remarks about the Prime Minister meet the considerably higher evidentiary bar the insult, public mischief and defamation provisions actually require.

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International Examples

1. United States: Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969): Speech can be punished only if it is intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action, not merely because it is offensive.
2. United Kingdom: Handyside v. UK (ECHR, 1976): Freedom of expression protects ideas that “offend, shock or disturb” the State or any section of society.
3. United States: Cohen v. California (1971): The US Supreme Court held that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric,” protecting the use of profanity as free speech.
4. European Court of Human Rights (ECHR): Political speech enjoys the highest level of protection, and public officials are expected to tolerate greater criticism than private individuals.

PYQ Relevance

[UPSC 2013] Discuss Section 66A of IT Act, with reference to its alleged violation of Article 19 of the Constitution.

Linkage: The PYQ tests the balance between freedom of speech under Article 19(1)(a) and reasonable restrictions under Article 19(2). The article examines the legal limits of criminalising speech, highlighting judicial safeguards against misuse of obscenity and other speech-related offences.