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New Delhi (CNN) -- An Indian cartoonist charged with sedition over images critical of the government is expected to be released on bail Wednesday, his lawyer said.

Aseem Trivedi had originally refused to seek bail and wanted the charges dropped, but changed his mind after receiving assurances from authorities that they would be reviewed, Vijay Hiremath said.

A Mumbai court granted Trivedi bail after someone else filed a public-interest petition seeking his release, Hiremath added.

The case against the cartoonist hinges on a complaint about drawings published during anti-corruption protests last year.

Trivedi's cartoons attacked perceived corruption in India's political system, with one of them depicting three lions in India's national emblem as wolves and another showing parliament as a toilet, Hiremath said.

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He was also charged with insulting national honor and authorities have blocked Trivedi's website, which carried the cartoons, Hiremath added.

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If convicted, he could be jailed for life.

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The case has sparked a fierce debate over free speech in the world's largest democracy.

"These charges are nonsense. They are stupid. They are just (there) because of the intolerance of some people. They should be dismissed as frivolous," said Markandey Katju, the chief of the Press Council of India.

Human Rights Watch has urged Indian authorities to immediately drop the charges and repeal the sedition law, which it alleged was being used to "silence peaceful dissent."

Trivedi was charged under section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, which was introduced by the British colonial government in 1860. The law prohibits "words either spoken or written, or by signs or visible representation" that attempts to cause "hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection," toward the government.

In 1962, India's Supreme Court ruled that the section was constitutionally valid, but said that its application should be limited to acts "involving intention or tendency to create disorder, or disturbance of law and order, or incitement to violence."

"Indian authorities have unlawfully charged individuals with sedition on repeated occasions for peaceful political purposes contrary to explicit directives of the Supreme Court," said Meenakshi Ganguly of HRW. "The obvious abuse of the sedition law to silence Trivedi should be the case that prompts the abolition of this law."

In its editorial Tuesday, one of India's most respected dailies, The Hindu, also criticized the sedition law.

"The latest victim of this anachronistic colonial-era law, for which the maximum punishment is life imprisonment, is a young cartoonist, arrested for no more than lampooning the corrupt and venal state of affairs in the country," it said.

"...the sedition clause not only remains on the statute book but is used periodically against human rights activists, journalists and intellectuals."

Trivedi has remained defiant in the face of the sedition charges.

"I am against this law. I have pride in what I have done and will keep doing it. This is a fight for a second independence," he shouted to reporters as a police van transported him away on Monday.

India's information and broadcasting minister, Ambika Soni, said the government did not believe in censorship and called on the media to practice "self regulation."

"I don't think making cartoons is wrong...But they (cartoonists) should not make national symbols as their subject," the minister said.