Gauhati High Court Quashes Case Against YouTuber Abhishek Kar Over ‘Tantric’ Remarks on Assam

way2barak, Feb 12: The Gauhati High Court has set aside criminal proceedings against financial content creator Abhishek Kar, who had been accused of making objectionable comments about Assamese women during a YouTube podcast last year.

The matter, titled Abhishek Kar v The State of Assam, stemmed from statements he allegedly made about a place in Assam “where girls practice black magic, witchcraft and can convert human beings into goats and other animals and later, at night, they can convert them back into human beings and establish physical relation to fulfill their lust.”

Following these remarks, a case was registered in January 2025 invoking provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Information Technology Act, and the Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Act, 2015. The complaint alleged that Kar’s comments insulted Assamese women and spread malicious narratives about the community.

Kar moved the High Court seeking quashing of the FIR and subsequent charge-sheet. His counsel submitted that he had already expressed regret for the statement and maintained that there was no intention to offend Assamese women or the broader Assamese community.

The defence argued that the ingredients required to establish the offences cited in the FIR were absent. Senior Advocate HRA Choudhury represented Kar in the proceedings.

Justice Pranjal Das, in an order dated February 9, examined the provisions under which Kar had been booked and concluded that none were attracted on a plain reading of the statement.

Addressing the allegation of promoting enmity or making imputations harmful to national unity, the Court observed, “The alleged offending statement of the petitioner clearly does not attract the ingredients of Section 197 of BNS. Further, to attract an offence under Section 196 of BNS also, the act of the accused has to be of such a nature that it promotes enmity between two communities on the grounds of religion, race, place of birth, language, etc.”

The Court found that the necessary elements to establish these offences were not present in the remarks attributed to Kar.

The prosecution had also invoked Section 67 of the Information Technology Act, which deals with transmission of obscene material in electronic form. However, the Court was unconvinced that the statement met that threshold.

“Section 67 of the I.T. Act criminalizes the Act of publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form. In my considered opinion, the statement of the petitioner taken on its face value cannot also be said to be attracting the ingredients of Section-67 of the I.T. Act. In the statement, the petitioner has made some controversial remarks, but the same does not necessarily amount to obscenity,” the judge held.

With regard to the Assam Witch Hunting (Prohibition, Prevention and Protection) Act, 2015, the Court noted that the definition under Section 2(g) required an impression that a person branded as a “witch” possesses powers to cause harm to society at large. “In my considered opinion, one of the important ingredients of the definition in Section 2(g) is that an impression is given that such person called a ‘witch’ has the power to harm anyone in the society at large in any manner. Such an element is missing, in my considered view, in the statement of the petitioner,” Justice Das stated.

Concluding that the penal provisions cited in the FIR were not made out, the Court ruled, “Therefore, there was no justification for registering the case under the said penal provisions and as a necessary corollary, there is also no justification in the filing of the charge-sheet against the petitioner under the said penal provisions.”

Accordingly, the High Court quashed the entire proceedings along with the charge-sheet. Additional Public Prosecutor K Baishya appeared for the State.