Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has quashed a first information (FIR) registered against a Hoshiarpur woman who was booked for allegedly hurting religious sentiments by dressing her pet dog as Lord Krishna and posting the photograph on WhatsApp during Janmashtami in 2024.
Justice Subhas Mehla allowed the woman’s petition, quashing the FIR registered at Talwara police station under Section 298 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, along with the final report filed before the trial court in January this year.
The FIR was lodged on a complaint by a man who identified himself as a Shiv Sena youth leader, alleging that the woman had hurt Hindu religious sentiments by dressing her dog in a yellow cloth and a crown to resemble Lord Krishna. During the investigation, the woman, a bank manager, told police she had been married for six years without children and treated her pet “as her own child,” and had not intended to hurt anyone’s sentiments when she posted the picture.
The court held that Section 298 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), which penalises damage or defilement of a place of worship or an object held sacred, applies only to objects located in a place of worship or carried in a religious procession, and that the ornaments used on the dog did not fall within this description.
The court also found no criminal intent on the woman’s part, holding that an act done “unwittingly or carelessly,” without deliberate malicious intent, did not attract criminal liability, relying on an earlier Supreme Court ruling on a similar matter involving cricketer MS Dhoni
.The court further held that the woman’s act was protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion, and noted that the private nature of a WhatsApp status weighed against any inference of intent to cause wider offence.
This post was last modified on July 3, 2026 3:49 pm