The Raja Singh acquittal pattern: How hate speech cases keep collapsing in court

In August 2022, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi was compelled to appeal for peace. The previous day, hundreds of Muslims had poured out into the streets of Hyderabad.

“Gustaq e nabi ki ek saza, sar tann se juda,” the crowd chanted. (‘There is only one punishment for audaciously insulting the Prophet, severe head from body.’) 

“I condemn the call for violence,” Asaduddin said on August 23, 2022. “Our fight should be within the ambit of the law. I am not in agreement with the language used. I want to tell protesters that they cannot take the law into their own hands.” 

The outpouring on Hyderabad’s streets was not unprompted. T Raja Singh, the Goshamahal MLA and then a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had made comments on Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s final Prophet. In response, a deeply offended community protested, particularly in the Old City. Raja Singh was arrested for his comments and subsequently granted bail 77 days later.

On June 30, 2026, Raja Singh was acquitted in the very case that had dominated headlines four years earlier.

A prominent face of Hindutva politics in Telangana, Raja Singh has built his political career on speeches routinely steeped in Islamophobia. Over the years, several FIRs have been registered against him, yet he has almost never been convicted.

Whether Raja Singh’s speech constituted hate speech and if it was punishable at all is a different question, but a closer examination of court records reveals that these cases fell apart because of weak chargesheets, shoddy investigations, and incomplete technical evidences 

TNM had reported in 2022 that while Hyderabad police had registered at least 101 cases against Raja Singh till then, he was only convicted in one case and acquitted in at least 33 cases at that time. These acquittals happened when the BRS and Congress were in power in the state.

In this story, we examined 22 more acquittals and the patterns they reveal.

The case that shook Hyderabad and still ended in acquittal

No speech of the three-time MLA received as much attention as the one against the Prophet.

On the night of August 22, 2022, as the demonstrations against Raja Singh swelled, police deployed additional personnel across sensitive areas and detained several protesters.

Raja Singh’s remarks came in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel, Sri Ram Telangana, titled ‘Faruqui K Aaka Ka Itihaas Suniye’ (Listen to the history of Faruqui’s master). The master in question was a snide reference to Prophet Muhammad.

The immediate context was comedian Munawar Faruqui’s proposed performance in Hyderabad. Faruqui had long been a target of Hindu right-wing groups, who accused him of mocking Hindu deities. Following the accusation, Munawar tendered an apology. 

In his video, Raja Singh quickly moved beyond criticism of the comedian and launched into a discussion of Prophet Muhammad, making a series of comments about the Prophet’s life, including references to his marriages and Islamic religious texts.

The controversy unfolded at a particularly volatile moment. Barely three months earlier, remarks made by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma on a live debate on Times Now about the Prophet had triggered protests across India and provoked diplomatic criticism from several Muslim-majority countries.

The BJP had suspended Nupur Sharma in an attempt to contain the fallout. Faced with another controversy centred on remarks about the Prophet, the party adopted a similar course. Raja Singh was suspended from the BJP, while the Telangana Police arrested him on August 23. He would spend 77 days in custody before securing bail.

His speech had been recorded. The video had been uploaded online. Television channels broadcast it. Clips circulated widely on social media. The reaction was immediate and visible; the controversy it generated was undeniable, and the prosecution had witnesses who claimed to have watched the recording. Police registered a case under Sections 153A, 295A, 504, 505(2), and 506 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), alleging that Raja Singh had promoted enmity between communities, outraged religious feelings, provoked breaches of peace, and committed criminal intimidation.

On its face, this should have been one of the easier cases to prosecute.

Yet when the case finally concluded last month, Raja Singh was acquitted.

How the case fell apart

The acquittal stemmed from how the case was investigated and presented in court.

The prosecution’s case rested heavily on electronic evidence. According to the complainant, Khadar Khan, he watched the video, downloaded it, and submitted it to the police along with a Section 65B certificate, the document required to authenticate electronic records as per the Indian Evidence Act. Another witness told investigators that he had watched the video and that the remarks had hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims.

But by the time the matter reached trial, the key dispute was centred more around whether the prosecution could prove that the video produced before the court was an authentic and reliable record of the speech that had triggered the controversy.

One of Raja Singh’s principal arguments concerned the source of the video itself. The prosecution never produced the original video uploaded to Raja Singh’s YouTube channel. Instead, a prosecution witness admitted that the video contained in the court record had been sourced from a broadcast from Telugu news channel NTV, which carried the footage, rather than the original upload. The defence also argued that the Section 65B certificate accompanying the recording did not specifically certify the alleged original source.

The distinction went to the heart of the prosecution’s case. 

“Since what the police produced was a video telecast on a channel, there were pauses, sections of the videos were deleted and edited. In a court of law, the only thing that matters is whether the original video was produced or not,” Karuna Sagar, Raja Singh’s lawyer, told TNM.

The forensic examination recorded discontinuities, pauses, and breaks within the video. The expert witness acknowledged that such interruptions could result from deletion, editing or removal of content. Seizing on that admission, the defence argued that the recording could not be treated as a complete and unaltered version of the original speech.

The issue was not necessarily whether the video had in fact been manipulated. Rather, the defence sought to show that investigators had failed to eliminate that possibility. 

The investigation itself provided further ground for challenge.

According to the defence, the investigating officer admitted during trial that he had neither examined the devices through which the video was viewed nor verified the computer allegedly used to download it. Ownership details of those devices were not collected. The downloading process itself was not independently verified.

The translated transcript of Raja Singh’s remarks became another area of dispute.

Like many speeches delivered by Raja Singh, the video contained a mix of languages, colloquial expressions, and references that required translation. The prosecution relied on a translated version of the speech during trial. Raja Singh’s lawyers challenged its reliability, arguing that the individual who prepared the transcript possessed no recognised qualification, certification or formal training in translation. According to the defence, the document reflected the witness’s personal understanding of the speech rather than expert linguistic analysis.

In many criminal cases, translation is a procedural detail. In hate speech cases, it can become much more important. Questions of meaning, context, and intent often turn on the precise words used and how those words are interpreted. By challenging the translator’s expertise, the defence was also challenging the prosecution’s interpretation of Raja Singh’s remarks.

The most consequential issue, however, concerned intent.

Among the charges leveled against Raja Singh was Section 295A of the IPC, which criminalises deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings. The provision requires more than proof that a statement caused offence. Prosecutors must establish that the accused acted with a deliberate and malicious intention. 

Legal scholar Shahrukh Alam said courts typically infer intent from the circumstances in which a speech is delivered rather than requiring direct evidence of a speaker's state of mind. “If you are doing something, and know that it will have certain consequences, the presumption is that you did it deliberately and knowingly,” she said. “Intent is read from context and acting in a way that you know certain consequences will follow.”

The defence said that the prosecution had failed to do so, arguing that some of the references cited in the case were traceable to Islamic source material. The defence further argued that the investigating officer had not examined whether the statements attributed to Raja Singh were derived from such material.

By the time the case concluded, the trial had moved far from the public outrage that initially surrounded it. The protests, the political fallout, and the national attention had established the significance of the controversy. They could not, however, substitute for the evidentiary burden required in a criminal court.

When the court acquitted Raja Singh in June, it did so after concluding that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt.

The outcome was significant because this was not a marginal case. “This could have persuasive value in the Nupur Sharma case,” Karuna Sagar told TNM.

No one offended by Raja Singh

Since December 2024, Raja Singh has been acquitted in 22 more cases, including the 2022 controversial Prophet remark.

In 15 cases, the judge agreed with the defence, which had argued that no public grievance, hurt feelings, or private complaints were found. In 14 cases, it was ruled that no real world disturbance, communal violence, or threat to peace was recorded. 

For instance, in April 2023, Shahinayatgunj police Sub-Inspector (SI) Rajeswara Reddy took up a suo motu complaint against Raja Singh following a Ram Navami rally speech, where he had called for the economic boycott of Muslims.

In his speech, the MLA said, “Those who say this country is not ours, you belong to Pakistan. There will be a tandav (furore). If a Hindu stands up, every mulla (slur word used to refer to Muslims) will be wiped out. You are the murderer of our mother, the Holy Cow.”

The speech didn’t end there. Raja Singh also spoke about how residents of Old City, an area that chiefly houses Muslim residents, are “desh ke gaddar” (traitors). “One says, no one here will purchase from a shop run by Hindus. I want to clarify that if we Hindus decided to implement the same, then just think what would happen of you? You wouldn’t even be allowed to beg for alms because it is Hindus who give alms.”

By a simple understanding of language and intent, Raja Singh’s speech met the criteria for hate speech. India does not have a universally applicable definition in law for hate speech. But in its 267th report, the Law Commission of India defined hate speech as “written or spoken, signs, visible representations within the hearing or sight of a person with the intention to cause fear or alarm, or incitement to violence.”

Several of Raja Singh’s speeches examined by TNM accused Muslims of being disloyal to the nation, belonging in Pakistan, or acting against India’s interests. Such remarks may potentially attract Section 153B of the IPC, which criminalises assertions that members of a religious, linguistic, regional or other group are less loyal to the nation because of their identity. A review of the cases examined by TNM found that the provision was rarely invoked against Raja Singh.

Delivered at Begum Bazaar, a commercial hub with several Muslim businesses, the  “desh ke gaddar” speech was heard by the persecuted community.

But how does a court determine whether a speech was intended to cause communal harm? According to Shahrukh Alam, criminal courts generally infer intent from the foreseeable consequences of a person's actions rather than requiring direct evidence of their state of mind.

In practice, this means courts can consider factors such as the audience being addressed, the political context in which a speech was made, and whether the speaker could reasonably anticipate the consequences of their remarks.

In March 2023, another speech by Raja Singh posted on Facebook showed him urging Hindus to purchase Holi festival items only from shops whose owners support and participate in burning the ‘Holika’ and to boycott “desh ke gaddar”.

Among other things, Raja Singh was let off because he did not clearly use the terms Islam or Muslims. “There is no chance for persons who belong to Muslim community to get hurt because of the speech of the accused, because there is no mention in the speech of the accused about the Muslim community or Islam religion,” the judge ruled.

Raja Singh’s use of euphemisms, while hardly indirect, also seem to shield him. He never quite refers to the group he is targeting as ‘Muslims’. Instead, he calls them cow killers or traitors, leaving just enough leeway to get away in courts by saying no specific community was referenced.

Acquittals on technicalities

But aside from the ruling that no feelings were outraged, a repeated occurrence was how the police investigation and the prosecution botched technical evidence crucial to the case. 

In 11 of the 22 cases TNM looked at, Raja Singh was acquitted because of defective, invalid, or unverifiable Section 65B Certificates, a crucial document under the Indian Evidence Act. In 10 cases, the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) voice/video analysis was either missing or botched.

This lapse is exemplified in the Ram Navami speech case three years ago, registered against Raja Singh by SI Rajeswara Reddy.

During a Ram Navami procession held on March 30, 2023, Raja Singh called for the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra, something he has said on many occasions.

According to the complaint, several of Raja Singh’s supporters also waved photographs of Nathuram Godse, MK Gandhi’s assassin, and “raised slogans with intention to create enmity among the public on the grounds of religion”.

Visuals of the Godse photo being waved were widely reported in the media.

Addressing the crowd, Raja Singh was heard saying, “Today, there are 100 crore Hindus in India. So why not declare India as a Hindu country? Today, we have more than 50 Islamic countries and 150 Christian countries. So today I want to ask those ‘impotent’ leaders who are against Akhand Hindu Rashtra, why are you objecting to it?”

The case was registered two days later, on April 1, under Sections 296 (disturbing religious assembly) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace) of the IPC.

Raja Singh was, however, acquitted. The court noted that the SI and other prosecution witnesses could not recall the exact slogans raised during the procession, or prove that they were actually on duty at the time.

It also observed that no member of the public had complained that Raja Singh’s speech was provocative, which in turn meant that public peace was not disturbed. 

“It was felt that the present case was filed only basing on the assumption and presumptions that the speech of the accused will cause enmity between two communities because if it is really provocative in nature, certainly complaint will be lodged by the people whose feelings were hurt” because of Raja Singh’s speech, the judgement said. 

This reason was cited in multiple acquittals – the police almost never managed to bring in witnesses who could attest that these remarks indeed affected communal harmony among Hindus and Muslims, particularly in Old City where most of these speeches were delivered.

The judgement also suggested that calling for Hindu Rashtra wasn’t even provocative in the first place. “It is surprising to hear from the above said witnesses as to how the speech made by the accused to form Hindu Rashtra is provocative in nature,” judge S Sree Devi observed.

Raja Singh was acquitted in 15 cases as the defence argued that no public grievance, hurt feelings, or private complaints could be found or were taken up after a particular speech was made by the MLA. In 14 cases, the judge stated that no real world disturbance, communal violence or threat to peace could be found. 

Consistently, judge Sree Devi ruled that ‘one cannot assume and presume’ future communal threats. She held that preemptive police apprehensions of potential future unrest have “no leg to stand” in the eye of the law without physical, proof-backed evidence of real-world disruption to public order.

Similarly in 2017, Raja Singh – in an interview with NTV Telugu – had said that he will dismantle the masjids located at Kasi, Mathura, and build a Hindu temple there and that he was preparing a special army for the same. He also likened Hyderabad’s Old City to a ‘mini Pakistan.’ 

This case didn’t stand because the forensic analysis of the video was bungled.

The prosecution’s case rested primarily on a YouTube video and a forensic voice-matching report, but the court held that the electronic records did not satisfy the mandatory requirements for admissibility. The Section 65B certificate accompanying the downloaded YouTube video was found to be defective because it was undated, omitted the source URL and other identifying particulars of the video. The certificate also failed to describe the computer system or storage media used to create the copy.

The court also rejected the prosecution’s forensic evidence linking the voice in the interview to Raja Singh. Investigators had obtained a CD containing his specimen speeches from the Telangana Legislative Assembly and sent it for forensic comparison with the interview recording. Although the FSL submitted a voice-matching report, the court ruled that the specimen voice recording itself was not legally admissible because the prosecution had failed to obtain a valid Section 65B certificate from the Assembly certifying its authenticity.

Since the reference sample was inadmissible, the subsequent forensic opinion also lost evidentiary value.

Apart from these evidentiary defects, the court found no proof that the video had actually disturbed public order or inflamed communal tensions. Police witnesses admitted that no law-and-order problem arose after the video was uploaded and that no member of the public had complained of hurt religious sentiments.

Other grounds for Raja Singh’s acquittal

In nine cases, Raja Singh was acquitted as witnesses turned hostile. In eight cases, electronic evidence went missing, and in seven cases, the court rejected presumptions connecting gestures/terms to target religions.

But by now, the pattern is clear. Either no one outside the police is willing to testify against Raja Singh, or the police can’t find such people who can describe his hate speeches and the harm they cause by further polarising people on communal lines in Old City. 

The police themselves have botched basic procedural work such as submitting video evidence, or even just proving they were on duty at the time.

And these are instances from just the past 1.5 years.

Raja Singh has been infamous for Islamophobic hate speech for over 10 years now. From Telangana to Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, he has addressed huge gatherings and called for economic boycott of Muslims, using bulldozers to raze their homes, demolishing mosques in contested sites, and even to poison girls who are ‘victims of love jihad’ if they refuse to convert back to Hinduism.

In Telangana, activists have been seeking legal action against him for hate speech since as early as 2016. Cases have fallen because the police didn’t take permission required to prosecute a legislator.

In one case from 2010, a mob led by Raja Singh was accused of setting fire to a mosque, damaging the gate of another mosque, attacking a CRPF officer, and vandalising a police vehicle. This was before he first became an MLA in 2014. 

All the accused were acquitted 12 years later, after most of the witnesses turned hostile against the MLA. The main complainant claimed that the police had made him sign a blank paper all those years ago. Even a police officer among the witnesses said he couldn’t identify anyone’s face from the mob.

Two more cases over the attacks on the two mosques also ended in acquittals 12 years later.

This has continued to happen under successive non-BJP governments in Telangana.

Raja Singh’s lawyer Karuna Sagar also represents Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay, BJP MP from Telangana. The lawyer was with Sanjay’s son Bhageerath when he was taken into custody in the POCSO case against him.

Karuna Sagar is a celebrity in his own right among BJP supporters and a key figure in the Telangana BJP. He was one of the complainants who filed cases against AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi over his infamous, alleged speech of “removing the police from the streets for 15 minutes” in 2012, in which Owaisi too, incidentally, was acquitted in 2022.

By now, Karuna Sagar is all too familiar with the legal loopholes his clients can use to their advantage.

In March 2026, Telangana government introduced a hate speech bill of its own in the state Assembly which is now under review of a Select Committee. Barring a few operational differences, the Telangana draft legislation was much like Karnataka’s law introduced in 2025.

“We focus on definitions of hate speech, or on offense and insult being subsequent problems of hate speech. But those are not issues: discrimination and structured violence is. A law should ideally not view two groups as equals. But neither 153A of the IPC nor state legislations like Karnataka’s hate speech draft law clarify one important facet of hate speech. Hateful speech causes discrimination. It is always a speech targeted at marginalised groups, not the majority,” Shahrukh Alam said. 

With inputs from Jahnavi

This report was republished from The News Minute as part of The News Minute-Newslaundry alliance.