The Delhi Police on Friday booked former JNU student leader Shehla Rashid on charges of sedition, promoting enmity and intentions to cause riots. Rashid has called the charge “frivolous, politically motivated and a pathetic attempt to silence” her.
According to Hindustan Times, FIR was filed against her on Tuesday based on a complaint by a Supreme Court lawyer, Alakh Alok Srivastava, against a series of her tweets.
FIR mentions a series of Rashid’s tweets that after the withdrawal of J&K’s special status, “armed forces are entering houses at night, picking up boys, ransacking houses, deliberately spilling ration on the floor, mixing rice with oil etc”.
Rashid was booked under IPC sections 124A (sedition), 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief), reported Hindustan Times.
According to The Wire, case was registered barely a day after reports emerged of the Delhi government having that it will not be granting police sanction to prosecute former Jawaharlal Nehru University students – including Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and nine others – who were charged with sedition after an event on campus in February 2016. Like Kumar and Khalid, Rashid was a prominent student leader in the University and was, at that time, the JNU students’ union vice-president.
Delhi Govt’s home department was quoted by Indian Express as having said that the students should not be prosecuted because their activities “do not amount to sedition against the state”.
Rashid had, meanwhile, stood by her comments and said that she could give proof if the Indian Army was to initiate an inquiry into her claims.
“The FIR is frivolous, politically motivated and a pathetic attempt to silence me. I am a petitioner in the constitutional challenge to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and our petition in the Supreme Court makes a very strong case for the restoration of the same. In my tweets, I have clearly mentioned that these are based on information received from people in the state,” Rashid said.
