Dharmasthala case: High Court lifts gag order on media, rejects lower court's ex-parte injunction
Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court has quashed the ex-parte injunction issued by a lower trial court that had barred media outlets from publishing or broadcasting any news related to D. Harshendra Kumar in connection with the ongoing Dharmasthala case, where allegations were made about the burial of hundreds of dead bodies.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna of the High Court partially upheld the petition filed by Ajay, the editor-in-chief of the YouTube channel Kudla Rampage, who had challenged the injunction. The trial court's order dated July 8, 2025, which imposed a sweeping media gag, was set aside.
The case will now be remanded back to the competent lower court to consider the interim petition filed by Kumar, taking into account the observations made by the High Court. The single-judge bench stated that the trial court must urgently decide on the interim plea and that all parties are free to argue their respective claims. The High Court made no remarks on the merits of the civil suit, criminal proceedings, or the specific allegations and counter-allegations involved in the case.
The court directed all involved parties, including Ajay and others, to cooperate fully with the lower court, emphasising that only one specific element of the original injunction order had been considered at this stage. A detailed copy of the High Court’s order is awaited.
D. Harshendra Kumar had filed a civil suit in the Additional City Civil and Sessions Court in Bengaluru, seeking to restrain the publication or sharing of 8,842 links across multiple platforms. These included 4,140 YouTube videos, 932 Facebook posts, 3,584 Instagram posts, 108 news articles, 37 Reddit threads, and 41 tweets, all of which he claimed were defamatory.
Despite not being named in the FIR lodged based on a sanitation worker’s complaint, Kumar argued that false and defamatory statements targeting him, his family, and his institutions were being widely circulated on digital and mainstream media. In response, the lower court had issued an ex-parte gag order on July 8, restraining all media houses and unknown individuals from publishing or disseminating such content until further proceedings.
This blanket ban was subsequently challenged in the High Court by Kudla Rampage, leading to Friday’s ruling lifting the restriction.
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Congress using hijab issue to pacify minority anger, alleges Karnataka LoP R Ashoka
Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.
Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.
He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.
Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.
He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.
Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.
He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.
