Abhijeet Dipke's selfie video of 31 July 2026 got quoted everywhere for its first sentence, and the sentence after it is the actual argument. Set that transcript next to the section list of the Zero FIR registered at Noida on 29 July, and the section missing from the list does more work than either of them.
Tribune, ThePrint and Deccan Chronicle, 31 July 2026
"Abusing is not a crime. It is a bad thing, explain it to the person that they should not use such language, but why is a case being filed?"
"If cases are to be filed for abusing, highest number of cases will be filed against the BJP's IT cell, because they are the ones who have abused women the most… And it will be against BJP's leaders, who have used bad language for years, even inside the Parliament."
CJP's accompanying post on X: "Will an FIR be filed against all those IT Cell members who have been abusing women for the last several years?"
CJP spokesperson Saurav Das, quoted by The Week on 30 July 2026: "The language may be wrong, it may be objectionable to someone, but it is no reason to invoke the criminal machinery… It leads to a chilling effect", alongside his advice to Gen Z to "be very careful" with their words.
Zero FIR, Expressway police station, Noida, 29 July 2026
Registered on the complaint of Smriti Singh, later transferred to Delhi Police because the alleged offence occurred at Jantar Mantar. The sections:
- BNS 352, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace.
- BNS 353(1), statements conducing to public mischief.
- BNS 356(1), defamation.
The complaint's stated ground was that the remarks lowered the dignity of the Prime Minister's constitutional office and were meant to spread hostility and disturb public peace, and that the woman was "a content creator seeking followers through controversy" rather than a genuine protester.
BNS 296
Obscene acts, songs or words in or near a public place, to the annoyance of others. Three months, or a thousand rupees, or both. It was not invoked. Sexualised gaalis shouted at a public gathering are the textbook fact pattern for that section, and it is the one section in the code that would have made Dipke's slogan false on its own terms. Instead the paperwork went with 352, which the Supreme Court narrowed twice in one year(Ramesh Chandra Vaishya, 19 May 2023; Mohammad Wajid, 8 August 2023) by holding that abuse, rudeness or insolence does not by itself amount to intentional insult, with Wajid adding that there is no blanket rule either way. It went with 353(1), which needs a false statement, rumour or report, and expletives are not information. And it went with defamation, which is non-cognizable and which under BNSS 222 a court cannot take cognizance of except on a complaint by the person aggrieved, so a third party walking into a police station over defamation of the PM is the wrong door.
Set the transcript beside the section list and Dipke gets his argument for free, entirely from the drafting. "Abusing is not a crime" is not the law, the accurate sentence is that abuse without the extra statutory ingredients is not a crime, and every one of those three sections was chosen so that the ingredients were missing. My read of CJP has not moved: I think it is a steered and heavily amplified front rather than a spontaneous student movement, the Kejriwal offer of help and Rahul Gandhi's roughly six-hour sit-in at Parliament Street PS on 21 August tell you who was waiting to collect it. That read does not repair a badly built FIR. The same file also seems to have skipped the step laid down in Imran Pratapgadhi(28 March 2025), where speech offences in the three-to-seven-year band require a preliminary inquiry under BNSS 173(3) before registration.
Still unverified
The FIR says 25, the apology video that surfaced on 1 August says "I am only 15 years old", and India Today and The Week both said they could not authenticate that video. If she is a minor the FIR route was procedurally wrong from the first minute and the Juvenile Justice Board was the forum. Whether the case even exists to be dropped is also contested: The Federal reported Delhi Police dropping it, while police sources told Hans India that the Zero FIR was never converted into a regular FIR in Delhi, so withdrawal "does not arise". No court has found anything against anyone here, and the bookmark's flat statement that she "abused the Prime Minister" is at this point still an allegation resting on a viral clip, however ugly the clip is. Modi himself went past it on 31 July, calling the protesters "misguided children" and saying he wanted to forgive them.
Was a preliminary inquiry done?
Nothing published so far says yes or no. I want that answered in writing by Gautam Buddh Nagar police and by Delhi Police, along with the reasoning that took a complaint about obscene words shouted at a public gathering into defamation and public mischief while BNS 296 stayed off the paper.