It’s been over five days since Twitter suspended the account of Jagrati Shukla, a consultant at Lok Sabha TV and a heroine of sorts for sections of Right-wing social media. Shukla’s always been vocal about sensitive issues—she’s previously tweeted about the “need to commit genocide in Kashmir Valley” and in favour of the massacre of Sikhs in 1984—yet she occupies a curious space in the Right-wing gallery because she’s also previously posted “derogatory” tweets about Hindu gods like Ram and Krishna.

But it was her tweet on November 7 that got her suspended for violating Twitter’s “hateful conduct” rules. On Wednesday, Shukla tweeted that she would prefer it if government forces used real bullets instead of pellets against Kashmiris. She was commenting on a tweet by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, who had shared pictures of protestors whom he said had been indiscriminately shot at by government forces using pellets in South Kashmir’s Kulgam.

In the aftermath of her suspension, there were attempts to trend the hashtag #ISupportJagratiShukla on Twitter. Shukla herself claims the suspension of her account was a result of “mass reporting by a politically-motivated group”. In an email response to Newslaundry, Shukla says her latest tweet does not amount to hate speech or inciting violence. Instead, her words are an exercise in free speech and in national interest.

She says, “My recent tweet which led to the controversy was pretty innocuous and didn’t contain any reference to a specific community, i.e., unless you consider stone pelters a specific community or that they belong to one. The suggestion of security forces using bullets instead of pellets to quell stone pelting doesn’t [sic] tantamount to inciting violence/hate speech.”

Shukla’s reading of the situation in Kashmir is that the protestors are “over ground workers funded by terrorist organisations”. She says, “The protesters in Kashmir have no specific cause except killing our security personnel. They aren’t civilians but over ground workers funded by terrorist organisations. We’ve used the carrot approach with them but it hasn’t worked, so why not resort to the stick?” Shukla also doesn’t look at opening fire at protestors as a human rights violation in the first place. Instead, she calls it a matter of “security policy”. “It protects human rights of our forces if anything. Governments world over (including India) have resorted to firing at violent protestors and people have died, so am not suggesting something unheard of.”

This point of view isn’t unusual. The same security line was used when Major Nitin Gogoi tethered a civilian to a jeep to use as a “human shield” against stone pelting, and when the Tamil Nadu police killed 11 people protesting against Sterlite Copper in Thoothukudi only this May, something which still had its fair share of supporters who asked how else an armed police force is expected to quell an unarmed civilian protest. Shukla is right that governments across India and other countries have resorted to violence when handling protestors but it’s still a blatant violation of the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s basic principles on the use of force and firearms by law enforcement officials.

Another troubling aspect of Shukla’s tweet is her association with Lok Sabha TV, India’s public broadcaster. The Network of Women in Media, India, had issued a statement condemning her appointment in the context of Shukla’s regular and repeated indulgence in hate speech, such as “calling for the genocide of Kashmiris, justifying the killings of Sikhs during the 1984 riots, and maliciously identifying individuals as Dalit and asking them to ‘go clean toilets’ and several other such tweets”. The group also said that “all such instances of hate speech are prosecutable offences under various criminal laws of the country”.

Shukla, however, says she has been told that she has “the full backing of my employers”. “Many of my seniors even agree with what I said at a personal level. The hashtag in my support has crossed 120K Tweets (last I checked) and trended at #1 all over India on Twitter for 16+ hours until Twitter (apparently) censored it. It’s not a paid trend and I’m not a politician, so the quantum of support I’ve received is a testimony to what the public opinion is.”

She thinks it’s her duty as a journalist to say the things she does. “Journalists shape public opinion and thus I see it as my duty to put forth my views on such issues when I know that it will sway public opinion and in turn help the government take the necessary steps in the interest of our national security, which it otherwise might hesitate to take.”

This raises three interesting questions: Where do we draw the line when it comes to free speech? What is the responsibility of a journalist when writing/commenting on sensitive issues? Should precautions be taken while using social media in these scenarios?

Mariya Salim, a women’s rights activist who was formerly with Amnesty International India, says, “If your right to free speech threatens my right to life, then it has to be addressed. If free speech is exercised to incite violence, then a line has to be drawn.” Salim says there already exists an “atmosphere of hate”, and one shouldn’t wait for violence to happen before taking action against someone “who is so openly advocating violence”. She says, “One’s freedom of speech cannot be higher than another person’s freedom of safety and right to life.”

However, Salim acknowledges that hate speech exceptions to free speech laws can be misused, like in Abhijit Iyer-Mitra’s case. “While hate speech is tricky because it has a huge scope for misuse, it should be immediately taken cognisance of if another person’s right to life is threatened.”

Salim has researched online violence against women and cautions against the use of online social media platforms. Things said online, more often than not, do not remain limited to the online space—they percolate into the physical space. A May 2018 study on anti-refugee rhetoric on Facebook corroborates the link between online hate and physical attacks, saying “social media can act as a propagation mechanism between online hate speech and real-life violent crime”.

Laxmi Murthy, a Bangalore-based journalist and core team member of the Free Speech Collective, says the Constitution already enunciates “reasonable restrictions” on the right to freedom of expression. She says, “There cannot be a static definition of what constitutes ‘hate speech’ as this will constantly change, be contentious and be tested in the courts. Ms Shukla’s recent utterances, however, go beyond just hate speech to an open call for extrajudicial killings and exhortations for public endorsement for state-sponsored violence, which is unacceptable.”

On Shukla’s role with Lok Sabha TV, Murthy says, “Incitement to violence, especially by a person employed by the official channel of the lower house of Parliament, is condemnable and should be dealt with through available laws.” She says the media must exercise caution by not encouraging polarisation. “Accurate facts, eschewing rumour and avoidance of reproducing speeches and/or without attribution must be avoided.”

Salim says journalists need to exercise some sort of self-regulation on social media. “The media fraternity itself will have to hold itself accountable.” This regulation would be higher when coming from the media space itself because then it wouldn’t be discarded as an attack on press freedom and censorship.

The problem is that it all comes down to interpretation and the law itself can be read and applied on the basis of that. Delhi-based advocate Sarim Naved says the Indian legal system makes it very clear that certain kinds of speech are criminalised—anything that “tends to incite violence is criminalised”. But the test of incitement—whether a person’s speech tends towards public violence—is a very vague standard. That’s why cases pertaining to violation of the right to free speech need to be determined in a court of law on a case-to-case basis.

Naved says the “crude liberal line” is that nothing would be criminalised, and you should be able to say whatever you want unless there is actual violence. “In that case, what you would be held liable for is the violence, not the speech. However, this crude understanding isn’t practical. The US, EU, UK—everybody has hate speech laws because violence is much more insidious than actual physical violence.”

In Shukla’s case, Naved says, she’s saying people should be killed for carrying out a protest. “If in a democracy, you are advocating for people to be shot for protesting publicly, then you are militating against people’s civil liberties.” He adds that when determining the criminal test of incitement, one needs to look at context and intent. “A person screaming in their drawing room saying ‘kill so and so’ may not amount to criminal speech. However, Twitter is a public platform where the intent is to communicate the idea publically. And the idea behind publically communicating it is to have some action consequent to it. Given her designation and her association with Lok Sabha TV, her words carry more weight. Given the people in our country are losing lives because of incendiary speech, her tweet could amount to an offence.”

But Abhinav Chandrachud, who practises in the Bombay High Court, disagrees. “What Shukla is advocating can be disagreed with, but it is advocacy of an opinion and does not amount to incitement.” He argues that for a speech to be considered illegal, the circumstances and intentions need to be taken into consideration. He cites a famous phrase used by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the US Supreme Court in Schenck v United States in 1919:  “shouting fire in a crowded theatre”. In Shukla’s case, Chandrachud says the test for incitement needs to consider circumstances where the speech is made, as well as the intent of the speech. “When someone falsely shouts fire in a crowded theatre, it will immediately induce panic. However, on Twitter, there is a space to debate, argue and reason with the person. In Shukla’s case, therefore, it does not amount to incitement.”

Chandrachud also says we should resist the criminalisation of speech just because one finds it disagreeable. “Contrasting debates and conversations will lead to the evolution of ideas. Therefore we must caution against criminalising speech as it might limit diversity in speech.” While public speech should be decent and civil, he says, in law, simply being offensive cannot be criminalised. Laws that regulate speech are based on hurting someone’s sentiment, making it open to interpretation. Therefore, there is a need to look at each case individually.