The Supreme Court has hit pause on the cascading legal trouble trailing Wazahat Khan, the man whose complaint triggered influencer Sharmistha Panoli’s arrest. While Khan remains jailed in West Bengal over two FIRs, the Court has now barred his arrest in cases filed across four other states—Delhi, Assam, Maharashtra, and Haryana.
A bench of Justices KV Viswanathan and N Kotiswar Singh passed the interim protection on Monday, but not without a pointed rebuke. Glancing through Khan’s now-deleted tweets, Justice Viswanathan remarked, “These tweets are all hate mongering. This cannot come under the freedom of speech and expression. Hate speeches will not take us anywhere.”
Khan, whose posts had sparked allegations of communal incitement, sought consolidation of all FIRs linked to the same online content. His counsel argued that the tweets had been taken down and a public apology issued. “He is cooperating fully,” the senior advocate stressed, asking that Khan not be dragged from state to state for what he claims is a single offense dressed in multiple uniforms.
The top court agreed, for now, to halt the arrest parade—at least outside Bengal. The legal storm, however, is far from over.
