Madras High Court quashes FIR against research scholar Lois Sofia for shouting anti-BJP slogans

Madras High Court on Wednesday quashed an FIR lodged against research scholar Lois Sofia for shouting “Fascist BJP down, down” slogans at Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan onboard an aircraft and at Thoothukudi airport in 2018 when she was chief of the Tamil Nadu BJP unit. 

Justice P Dhanabal of the Madurai Bench ruled that shouting slogans don’t constitute an offence and that the matter before it was trivial in nature. The court was hearing a petition filed by Sofia in 2019 seeking quashing of the FIR filed against her by Thoothukudi police in September 2018. 

“The judgement from the Madras high court today quashing the FIR and chargesheet against me marks the end of a nearly 5 year legal battle,” Sofia said in a statement. She also said Tamilisai’s actions of “goading party men, misrepresenting what happened, using state machinery to intimidate and legally harass me are now a matter of public record.”

Lois Sofia, who was travelling to her home town of Tuticorin from Canada via Chennai, was arrested on September 3, 2018, and sent to 15-day judicial custody. However, she was granted bail the next day. 

The case relates to Sofia shouting slogans at Tamilisai inside the aircraft in which they flew from Chennai to Thoothukudi and at the airport on arrival. The police booked the research scholar after the incumbent Telangana Governor filed a complaint with the airport police alleging that the girl could have acted “at the insistence of a terror group.” 

Sofia was booked under sections 290 (punishment for public nuisance in cases not otherwise provided for) and 75 (1) (C) of the Madras City Police Act. Eye-witnesses had then said Sophia shouted “fascist BJP down, down” after spotting Tamilisai in the flight but the BJP chief seems to have ignored the comment. However, the young research scholar took to sloganeering at the arrival area of the Tuticorin airport – which is when the comment snowballed into a major controversy. 

Video clippings had shown Tamilisai losing her cool, yelling at the girl for having behaved in a “vulgar manner” and refusing to heed to requests from police personnel on duty to ignore the comments. 

“Since the incident took place inside an aircraft, I did not raise my voice. But the same girl shouted similar slogans when I was waiting to collect my check-in baggage at the Tuticorin airport. Since she repeated her act and her slogans were not normal in nature, I suspect that her behaviour was instigated by some group. I suspect that she behaved in an odd manner at the insistence of a terrorist group,” Tamilisai had claimed.