New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS) YouTuber Ajeet Bharti on Monday failed to secure immediate protection from arrest from the Delhi High Court in connection with an FIR over his alleged casteist and derogatory remarks against Nagina MP Chandra Shekhar Azad and members of the Scheduled Caste community, as the hearing on his anticipatory bail plea was adjourned to September 16.
A single-judge Bench of Justice Saurabh Banerjee deferred the hearing after Bharti’s counsel informed the High Court that he did not have a complete copy of the FIR registered against him at North Avenue Police Station.
The Delhi High Court was told that the complete FIR would be supplied to the applicant’s counsel during the course of the day, following which the matter was listed for Wednesday.
Bharti’s counsel sought interim protection from arrest till the next date of hearing. However, Justice Banerjee did not grant any immediate interim relief at this stage and adjourned the hearing till Wednesday.
The plea arises out of FIR No. 30/2026 registered on August 23 at Police Station North Avenue under provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Section 67 of the Information Technology Act and provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
According to the FIR and the material placed before the trial court, Bharti allegedly made casteist, derogatory and humiliating remarks concerning Chandra Shekhar Azad, a sitting Lok Sabha member from Nagina, and persons belonging to the Scheduled Caste community during an episode of his programme published on social media.
The allegations arose after Bharti allegedly responded to a comment suggesting that he arrange his sister’s marriage with Azad. According to the trial court order, Bharti’s response included references to the “Dom” and “Chamar” castes and questioned Azad’s suitability to marry a woman from a “Savarna” family.
Bharti had earlier sought anticipatory bail before the Patiala House Courts, but Additional Sessions Judge Saurabh Partap Singh Laler dismissed his application on September 7, holding that the statutory bar under Section 18 of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was attracted.
The trial court held that the material prima facie disclosed an offence under Section 3(1)(r) of the SC/ST law, which deals with intentional insult or intimidation of a member of a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe with the intent to humiliate.
The court observed that the impugned passage contained “an express, repeated invocation of caste names” and was not merely a stray reference made during an argument.
It further held that the remarks invoked “caste hierarchy and marriageability directly”, particularly the statement that Chandra Shekhar Azad would first have to “make himself worthy” to seek the hand of a woman from a “Savarna” family.
The trial court said the statement was a “specific reference to caste and humiliating” and prima facie reflected a caste-based notion that a person belonging to the Scheduled Caste community had to be “something extra” or “worthy” to marry a girl from an upper-caste family.
It also observed that the alleged episode had been published on a publicly accessible social media platform and had garnered more than 23,000 views, observing that the “public view” ingredient could not be treated as plainly absent at the pre-arrest stage.
The trial court had clarified that its observations were confined to the limited and tentative purpose of examining the applicability of the statutory bar and did not amount to a finding on Bharti’s guilt or innocence.
–IANS
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