The Supreme Court on Monday (February 16, 2026) found “no good reason” to entertain a series of petitions seeking a criminal investigation against Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma for giving communal speeches and for a social media post, since deleted, depicting him firing a gun towards an animated image of two Muslim men.
Instead, a three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant asked the petitioners, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India, to approach the Guahati High Court despite the petitioners pointing out that Mr. Sarma is the “boss of Assam”.
The Supreme Court declined to entertain the petition, though it agreed with the petitioners that no political leader or constitutional officeholder should conduct themselves in a manner that would harm the secular ethos and morality enshrined in the Constitution, especially when elections were near.
The petitioner-parties have accused Mr. Sarma of indulging in a “sustained pattern of hate speeches”. They said the social media post, circulated in the public domain as a video, on February 7, 2026, from the “official handle of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Assam on X (formerly Twitter), namely, ‘BJP Assam Pradesh’ (@BJP4Assam) and thereafter widely disseminated, has been the most blatant and disturbing manifestation of the pattern complained of”.
The petition said that the video was removed from the public domain following severe backlash. However, the material continued to be widely circulated and disseminated through multiple other accounts and platforms.
The petitioners, led by senior advocates A.M. Singhvi, C.U. Singh and advocate Nizam Pasha, submitted that Mr. Sarma, while holding the constitutional office of the Chief Minister of Assam, gave speeches which “target, terrorise, and instigate hostility and overt violence against the Muslim community residing in Assam”.
This story was originally published in thehindu.com. Read the full story here.