A 19-year-old engineering student was arrested by Madhya Pradesh police for a social media post allegedly defaming Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Bharatiya Janta Paty (BJP) over the demonetisation issue, reports Hindustan Times (HT).
Abhishek Mishra, a resident of Chhatarpur, was arrested by the cyber cell of Bhopal police on 12 November from a private hostel and was bailed out the following day.
The police registered an FIR against him under section 469 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) – forgery for purpose of harming reputation – and Section 66C of Information Technology Act, 2000 (identity theft).
According to the report, police sources said cops seized the student’s laptop, mobile phone, accessed his social media accounts and deleted the controversial posts.
The student calls himself an RTI activist and video-maker, and has been a critic of the saffron brigade "in order to spread awareness among people". His Twitter account has some 16,000 followers and after his “controversial posts” were deleted, the total number of tweets on his page was 45.
Town inspector cyber cell, Bhopal, Ravikant Dehariya confirmed the arrest and told HT:
Abhishek was involved in posting offensive comments and posts against the chief minister and other important dignitaries. He was also running a website. We arrested him, deleted all the posts from his Facebook and also blocked his website.
The exact complaint against Abhishek was not disclosed.
Abhishek’s lawyer Ajay Mishra said the charges levelled against him say that he had shared some news about money being seized from a BJP leader after demonetisation by the police and pasted Chief Minister (CM) Chouhan’s picture on it.
Someone in the CM’s house saw the post and informed the cyber cell and the police took action against him. The police also seized his laptop, dongle and mobile phone and some other electronic gadgets. Despite repeated requests, police are not providing the copy of the FIR.Abhishek’s Lawyer told HT
(Source: Hindustan Times)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)