Assam: Gauhati HC quashes case against TV anchor for statement on Kamakhya temple

Staff Reporter

Guwahati: The Gauhati High Court recently quashed a criminal case filed against Akansha Swarup, a news anchor at CNN-News18, for her statement about the alleged practice of human sacrifice at the Maa Kamakhya temple.

The blatantly unverified and highly defamatory statement against the Maa Kamakhya Temple had been made by Swarup during an interview with a relative of Indore businessman Raja Raghuvanshi, who was allegedly killed by his wife Sonam and her boyfriend Raj Kushwaha in Meghalaya’s Sohra earlier this year.

It is further stated that during the said telecast, she made a statement on air that human sacrifice is being practised at Maa Kamakhya Temple and that the statement was a declarative factual assertion.

“Since they had gone to Kamakhya, where sacrifices or human sacrifices are offered, is your family suspicious that this could be a tantric killing?” Swarup is stated to have asked the interviewee, a cousin of deceased Raja Raghuvanshi, who then answered in the affirmative.

Following the interview, an FIR was lodged on June 12, 2025, at Crime Branch Police Station, Commissionerate of Police, Guwahati, Assam, following which a case was registered under Section 196(2)/299/302 of the BNS, 2023.

Swarup later filed a petition (Crl.Pet./1187/2025) before the High Court challenging the FIR against her.

Delivering the judgement, Justice Shamima Jahan held that no prudent person could come to the conclusion that Swarup had made the statement or posed the question with an intention to create enmity or disharmony between groups as alleged in the FIR. The court, therefore, quashed the FIR against Swarup.

However, the Court also remarked that her statement was careless and not required.

“It will not be out of context, however, to mention herein that the said statements were utterly not required in the facts of the case, and the same were totally careless on the part of the petitioner as well as the interviewee. Statements made in a public forum should be well thought out. The petitioner as such is constrained not to make any such statement in the near future before any forum, much less public media, at any point in time without any authority and validation,” the single-bench judge said.

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