The complainant in the case against a 15-year-old girl over her abusive remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the CJP protest has withdrawn the complaint, saying that she no longer wished to pursue it as the teenager had apologised and the PM had forgiven her.
Supreme Court lawyer Smriti Singh, who lives in Ghaziabad's Vasundhara and had lodged the complaint, told PTI on Tuesday evening that the FIR was initially filed against eight girls, with the Noida teen being the first among them.
She said the zero FIR was registered on July 29 based on a complaint lodged by her at the Expressway police station in Noida.
The case was registered under sections 352 (insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 353(1) (statements conducing to public mischief) and 356(1) (defamation) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), she said.
"After the prime minister appealed for forgiveness, the girls, including the Noida girl, uploaded apology videos. I had also posted a video saying that if the girls apologised, I would withdraw my complaint," Singh said.
She said the remaining girls also apologised subsequently and that she has withdrawn her complaints in all eight cases.
"Since the prime minister forgave them, I also do not want to pursue the matter further. I have communicated my decision to Delhi Police and Crime Branch," Singh told PTI.
At a housing society in Sector 168 where the teenager and her mother lived, security guards and maintenance staff told PTI that the two were not home.
"The family had remained withdrawn since the video surfaced. Personnel from Delhi and Noida police had visited their residence on a few occasions," a security guard told PTI.
The security and maintenance staff said they did not know the family's current whereabouts.
On the family's allegation of "harassment and hounding", an official at Noida's Expressway police station told PTI that no information had been received about the family facing harassment either inside the housing society or elsewhere within its jurisdiction.
The official said Noida Police had registered a zero FIR on the day it received the complaint and transferred it to Delhi Police, as the alleged incident took place in the national capital.
"The family has not been in contact with us since then and has not shared any information or complaint with the local police," the officer said, adding that the family may have temporarily shifted to Faridabad in neighbouring Haryana.
Days ago, the girl's mother had appealed to Prime Minister Modi to forgive her daughter, saying the family had repeatedly apologised and that the minor had been influenced during the protest.
In an interaction with PTI Videos on August 1, the mother said that she was grateful to the prime minister for publicly forgiving her daughter.
She urged Modi to consider restricting access to social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook for children aged between 10 and 20, saying "minors should be kept away from protests and political activities as they can be easily influenced".
The mother also claimed that police personnel had repeatedly visited their residence after the purported video of her daughter's remarks went viral, despite the family apologising.
She appealed to the prime minister to intervene, alleging that her daughter's age mentioned in the FIR was incorrect. She said her daughter was 15 and requested that the case against her be withdrawn so that she could "live peacefully".
The family's lawyer, Anil Kumar, told PTI Videos that the girl was a juvenile and claimed the complaint wrongly described her as a 25-year-old woman working in a salon.
"The FIR had been registered without a proper preliminary verification and had that been done, the FIR would not have been registered at all," he said.
The controversy erupted after the video purportedly showing the girl using abusive language against the prime minister during a Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)-led protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar went viral recently. The protest was held against paper leaks and alleged irregularities in the education system, demanding the resignation of former Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who later stepped down.
The girl later released an apology video on social media, saying she had been "influenced", was "extremely embarrassed and ashamed", and that it was her "first and last mistake".
Prime Minister Modi subsequently said he had forgiven the students who allegedly abused him and his late mother, adding that they should be guided in the right direction instead of being punished.
Police sources in Delhi had said on Monday that the zero FIR was still under examination and had not yet been converted into a regular FIR. They also clarified that no separate FIR had been registered in Delhi in the matter so far.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
