The Indian state government dropped sedition charges against the cartoonist who was arrested over his anti-corruption drawings last month.
Aseem Trivedi was detained for four days but was later released on bail after an enormous domestic and international backlash from press freedom groups and journalists.
"The sedition charges have been dropped but the other charges continue," his lawyer Vijay Hiremath told AFP, after western Maharashtra state's top law officer filed a revised affidavit on Friday to the Bombay High Court.
Trivedi still faces charges under section 66A of the Information Technology Act and section two of the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act.
Advocate general Darius Khambata told the court that after a close look at the issue, there was "clearly no case" under sedition regulations, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
Khambata described police action against Trivedi as a "bonafide knee jerk reaction" to the numerous complaints they received over his cartoons, displayed at an anti-corruption rally last year and online.
But he said three of seven drawings were still found to be in violation of the other acts. "Proceedings in this will continue against him," Khambata said.
Trivedi's website features cartoons showing the sole surviving gunman from the 2008 Mumbai attacks urinating on the Indian constitution, and the parliament building shaped as a huge toilet bowl but it is not clear which cartoons remain part of the prosecution case.
Another cartoon titled "Gang Rape of Mother India" shows a woman draped in the Indian flag being held down by a politician and a bureaucrat as a horned animal depicting corruption appears ready to attack her.
The arrest of the cartoonist sparked a backlash against Indian authorities, accused by campaigners and rights groups of using British colonial-era sedition laws to silence dissent in the country. The maximum penalty for sedition in India is life imprisonment.
Human Rights Watch was among those calling for the "politically motivated" charges to be dismissed, describing such an arrest as "a hallmark of a dictatorship, not a democracy".
Trivedi, who is currently taking part in the Indian equivalent of the "Big Brother" reality show, told AFP last week that the case had not deterred him from his political drawings.
"I will keep on with my campaign against corruption, my cartoons and my art," he said.
"My anger was against corruption. This whole case was just a part of the story."
Source: DCMF and AFP
