Clearing the reservations on the issue of wearing kirpan inside the courtrooms, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday said that wearing and carrying kirpan to a courtroom was not prohibited.
The matter of carrying kirpan had come to high court around a year back when an Ambala court
had refused to record statement of a Sikh youth who was wearing a kirpan.
Deciding the matter in favour of the Dilawar Singh of Ambala, Justice Harinder Singh Sidhu said that he should not have been restrained. Justice Sidhu asserted the petitioner being an Amritdhari Sikh was enjoined by his religion to, at all times, wear the five “kakas”, of which kirpan was one.
“The Constitution explicitly and in the plainest terms secures to the petitioner the right to wear and carry kirpan as being included in the profession of his religion. This right could only be subject to regulation in the interest of public order, morality or health, which regulation could be only by the mandate of a statute.”
“Hence, in the absence of any law or valid regulation prohibiting the carrying of a kirpan in a court room, the petitioner could not be restrained from wearing and carrying a kirpan in the courtroom”.
Justice Sidhu elaborated that the petitioner was to appear as a prosecution witness in a murder case. He was wearing a kirpan as enjoined by his religion. There was nothing in the impugned order to suggest that the petitioner was indulging in any disorderly behavior, or he had past history of violent crime or “there was other cause for even the remotest apprehension in the mind of the presiding Judge of his behaving violently and causing harm or injury to any person”.