"Mere ander ke andheron ko karne do shikayat. Hasa kar lakhon chehron ko roshan kiya hai maine (Let the darkness inside me complain. I've made lakhs of people laugh, lighting up their faces)."
On Friday, comic Munawar Faruqui received interim bail from the Supreme Court, after spending more than a month in jail for allegedly insulting Hindu deities. His earlier requests for bail had been rejected by both the sessions court and the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The case attracted controversy because of the arbitrary nature of the charges: the police itself admitted that it had no evidence to show that the comedian had actually hurt religious sentiments.
People present at the club say that the police detained him before he had actually started performing.
However, even though Faruqui has got bail, four of the five other people who were arrested along with him in Madhya Pradesh on January 1 are still in jail. If Faruqui’s arrest was seen as arbitrary, theirs is even more so. The police seemined to pick up people at random in the club in Indore in which the comic was due to perform.
Comedian Munawar Faruqui was released from a jail in Indore late on Saturday, a day after being granted interim bail by the Supreme Court, PTI reported. Faruqui had been in jail since January 1 for allegedly insulting Hindu deities during a show.
Earlier in the day, the authorities at Indore Central Jail had refused to release Faruqui, saying that they had not received any official order for the same,
The Indian Express reported.
“We had earlier not received the order, however, a judge from the Supreme Court called up the chief judicial magistrate of Indore and asked him to check the website for the uploaded orders and in case it was already uploaded, to comply by it,” Indore Central Jail Superintendent Rajesh Bangde told the newspaper. “We checked the site and it was uploaded and hence he was released at 11 pm.”
Munawar Faruqui Released From Indore Jail After Late-night Intervention By Supreme Court Judge livelaw.in - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from livelaw.in Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.