An overview of the Supreme Court in New Delhi. | Photo credit: Shashi Shekhar Kashyap
The Supreme Court has confirmed the right of housing buyers to protest peacefully against builders, saying that portraying their right to freedom of expression as a criminal offense is a clear abuse of law.
“A right to protest peacefully with the lack of law is a corresponding right, that consumers should possess just when the seller enjoys their right to commercial discourse. Any attempt to portray them of criminal crimes, when the necessary are an abuse of process and must be nibbled from one side to another,” headed by Judge KV Viswanathan observed in a recent trial.
The case votes in a unique way of protest used by the unhappy buyers against a builder, A. Suri developers. They erected a visible banner for the general public in English and Hindi their complaints against the builder.
The builder company touched on housing buyers to the courts about the position of damaging their reputation. The Metropolitan Magistrate Court, Borivali, Mumbai, summoned housing buyers, who appealed before the Superior Bombay Court to cancel the case of the builder. However, the Superior Court rejected the plea, which forced them to move the Apex court.
“Housing buyers and developers have not always taken the best friends. The instances are innumerable where the two have bone in Daggers.
The Court concluded that the form of protest appealed by housing buyers was peaceful and orderly and without use, in any way, an offensive or abuse language.
“You couldn’t say that the recurring [homebuyers] He crossed the Lakshman Rekha and transgressed the offensive zone, ”Judge Viswanathan observed.
The Apex Court found the protest of D -Housing buyers within the reach of one of the exceptions to criminal defamation and was protected by the right to freedom of expression and the expression enshrined in article 19 of the Constitution.
Allowing the appeal of housing buyers, the Apex court said that “the criminal procedures level against them, if they are allowed to continue, will be a clear process abuse.”
Published – April 18, 2025 09:31 PM IST