Advocate hopeful he will be cleared of charges
KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 20
Comedian Apoorwa Kshitiz Singh has been released on bail amount of Rs 250,000 by Kathmandu District Court.
Apoorwa was arrested on the charge of hurting the sentiments of the indigenous Newar community with the content in his stand-up comedy. The government attorney had later charged him with four different criminal offences related to spreading ethnic hatred and violating social norms.
A single bench of judge Madhav Prasad Mainali ordered Apoorwa's release. Over 70 people from the Newari community had filed the case against him.
Advocate Shanti Ram Khatiwada who represented Apoorwa said, "The kind of criminal cases Apoorwa faced were unjust also because he had publicly confessed that it was a mistake and also apologised for mistakenly hurting the sentiments of the Newar community.
Now that the court has given verdict in his favour, we are hopeful that he will be cleared of all the charges."
The state later attracted four criminal offences under the criminal code act on the same charge and filed the case against him. Section 65, 165,166 and 168 were attracted against Apoorwa, which have different provisions against spreading hate amidst communities, passing humiliating comments, disrupting social peace and hurting the culture and tradition of any people. If proven guilty in all the four charges, Apoorwa could get maximum of 11 years imprisonment.
Apoorwa was arrested on August 28 after dozens of local people from the Newar community filed a complaint for his arrest. Appoorwa had surrendered to the police upon the latter's request.
After spending some days inside the judicial custody, the comedian was forced to be released on condition that he would come back on an agreed date after he contracted COVID-19. In line with this, he had gone back to the police on October 17. Yesterday, he was taken to the court to record his statements, wherein he denied all the charges saying he didn't intend to hurt the sentiments of any people or community.
In a video posted on the YouTube channel called 'Comedy Cafe', Singh had passed some satirical comments on the topics of Newari delicacies, Newari language pronunciation, among other cultural practices.
The title of the show was 'Newar tradition'.
Upon facing backlash from the people of Newar community, the video was removed from the You- Tube channel. The comedian had also formally apologised for hurting the sentiments of people.
A version of this article appears in the print on October 21, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
