Madhya Pradesh High Court Refuses To Issue Guidelines To Curb Alleged Defamatory News Targeting Muslims On 'Love Jihad'

The Madhya Pradesh High Court has refused to entertain a Petition seeking guidelines to prevent allegedly misleading and defamatory news targeting the Muslim Community on the matter of love jihad.

The Court was considering a Writ Petition seeking preventive and prohibitory action against publication of news pertaining to love jihad allegedly defaming the Muslim Community by misleading the audience.

The single bench of Justice Vishal Mishra observed, "In view of the nature of relief which has been claimed in the writ petition coupled with the averments made in the complaint it is clear that the petition is in the nature of a Public Interest Litigation for which mandamus cannot be issued. Under these circumstances, this Court refrains from entertaining the writ petition."

The Petitioner was represented by Advocate Deepak Bundele while the Respondent was represented by Government Advocate Sumit Raghuwanshi.

The preliminary objection taken by the State was regarding the maintainability of the Petition as it claimed that the Petitioner had no locus to file the petition. Counsel for the Petitioner submitted that in pursuance of the publications made in the newspaper, the religious faith of the Muslim community is being exploited resulting in hurting the sentiments of the petitioner and other persons belonging to the Muslim community. It was submitted that the Petitioner, being a member of the Muslim Community, was an aggrieved person and thus filed an Application before the Police Authorities seeking redressal of his grievance, but no action was taken and he was compelled to file the present Petition.

The Court refused to entertain the Petition on technical grounds and further observed, "Even otherwise, if the complaint is made by the petitioner and no action was taken by the concerning Station House Officer on the complaint made by the petitioner then the petitioner is having a remedy to approach the higher authorities or file a complaint before the concerning Magistrate for redressal of his grievances in view of the judgments passed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the cases of Sakri Basu vs. State of U.P and others reported in (2008) 2 SCC 409, Sudhir Bhaskar Rao Tambe vs. Hemant Yashwant Dhage and Others reported in 2016 (6) SCC 277 and M. Subramanium vs. S. Jakari reported in (2020) 6 SCALE 204 and Vinubhai Haribhai Malaviya vs The State Of Gujarat reported in (2019) 17 SCC 1. The petitioner being a complainant is having an alternative and efficacious remedy of approaching the concerning Magistrate by filing an application under Section 156(3) of Cr.P.C./Section 175 of BNSS or by filing a private complaint under Section 200 of Cr.P.C./Section 223 of BNSS."

The Petition was accordingly dismissed.

Cause Title: Maruf Ahamd Khan vs. The State of Madhya Pradesh & Ors. (2025:MPHC-JBP:26708)

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