1 day agoAuthor: Akriti Saxena
A Zero FIR against 15-year-old Ruchika Singh for allegedly abusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a Jantar Mantar protest has followed a familiar script: viral clip, outraged complaint, criminal case, public argument over free speech.
What tends to get skipped in that sequence is the more revealing question, whether the law invoked here was ever built to cover conduct like this.
While the debate over whether a case should be filed or not on the CJP supporter prevails, a more important question to ask is whether one cab be jailed for abusing someone?
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How a NEET protest turned into a criminal case
The remarks were made on July 23, at a demonstration organised by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) over alleged irregularities in competitive exams, including the NEET paper leak.
A video appearing to show Singh using abusive language against the Prime Minister spread widely online. Ghaziabad resident Smriti Singh filed a complaint at Noida’s Expressway Police Station, arguing the clips “tarnish the country’s image.”
What followed was procedurally unremarkable: a Zero FIR, filed irrespective of jurisdiction, was registered under Sections 352, 353(1) and 356(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, then transferred to Sansad Marg Police Station in Delhi, which has actual territorial authority over Jantar Mantar. The case now sits with Delhi Police.
CJP spokesperson Saurav Das has pushed back, arguing this belongs in a civil defamation suit, not a criminal courtroom: “People use abusive language every day in this country. How has that become a criminal offence?”
That question is, in effect, the entire legal debate.
Can you be jailed for abusive language?
This is the part the outrage cycle usually flattens: the BNS has no provision that simply criminalises rude or offensive speech. There is no catch-all “insulting a leader” charge.
Every section typically invoked in cases like this is built for something narrower, and prosecutors end up stretching the facts to fit the statute, rather than the other way around.
Section 296
The reflexive charge in public-obscenity disputes is Section 296 (previously Section 294 IPC), covering obscene words or acts in a public place “to the annoyance of others.” Its ceiling, three months’ imprisonment, signals how minor the legislature intended this offence to be. Courts have also read “obscene” narrowly, which keeps most crude political remarks outside its scope.
Section 352
This is the provision cited against Singh, and it’s widely misread. Section 352 doesn’t punish insult; it punishes insult intended, or likely, to provoke a breach of public peace.
Everything hinges on that causal link, not how offended the complainant felt, but whether the words were reasonably calculated to trigger disorder or further offences.
Heckling a Prime Minister at a protest, without more, is a difficult fit for that test. Conviction carries up to two years, a fine, or both.
Section 253
Also cited in the FIR, this section targets conduct far graver than name-calling: inciting mutiny in the armed forces, spreading fear that pushes people toward offences against the state, or fomenting communal enmity. Sharp, even crude, criticism of a leader sits well below that threshold, which is why legal observers have flagged its inclusion here as a stretch.
Section 356
The more defensible charge is defamation under Section 356, since it doesn’t require proof of intended disorder, only reputational harm through false allegation.
But defamation carries its own counterweight: standing exceptions for good-faith criticism of a public figure’s conduct in office.
That carve-out exists precisely to stop defamation law from becoming a backdoor route to punishing political speech, the exact tension this case sits inside.
Sections 351 and 79
Two adjoining provisions frame the boundaries of India’s abuse-related law: Section 351 covers abuse paired with actual threats to life, reputation or property (up to seven years for the gravest form), and Section 79 covers words or gestures meant to insult a woman’s modesty.
Neither is charged here, but their presence in the code underlines a pattern, Indian law treats abuse as criminal only when coupled with something more: threat, incitement, or gendered targeting. Abuse alone, directed at a powerful figure, doesn’t cleanly fit any existing box.
The clearest signal came from the Telangana High Court in September 2025, which held that social media posts calling a political party a “scourge” and a “pest”, however harsh, couldn’t attract Sections 352 or 353 without a genuine threat to public order.
At most, the court found, such language might fall within the “limited ambit” of defamation, itself cushioned by constitutional protections for political speech. That reasoning maps closely onto the Singh case: sharp language, no demonstrated threat to order, defamation as the more plausible fallback.
When does abuse actually become a crime?
Not every abusive or offensive remark qualifies as a crime under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. Courts have repeatedly drawn a line between language that is merely rude and language that amounts to an intentional insult, threat, or an act likely to provoke a breach of peace or target a woman’s dignity, and only the latter attracts criminal liability.
Section 352 of the BNS, which deals with intentional insult meant to provoke a breach of peace, comes into play only if investigators can show the words were intended, or likely, to trigger violence, public disorder, or another offence. Absent that link, verbal abuse on its own does not automatically become a criminal matter, regardless of how offensive it may be.
