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A Noida woman was booked on Thursday for making purportedly objectionable remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a social media video during the youth protests at Jantar Mantar, The Indian Express quoted the police as saying.
A first information report has been registered against 25-year-old Ruchika Singh under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to intentional insult to provoke breach of peace, statements conducing to public mischief and defamation, The Times of India reported.
Saurav Das, spokesperson for the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign that had called for the protests, said that if the language used during the demonstrations was “derogatory in nature”, the person was free to pursue civil and criminal defamation proceedings against the individual, PTI reported.
“However, the use of criminal justice machinery against protesters is highly condemnable,” the news agency quoted Das as saying. “No one should be punished merely for using objectionable language.”
He urged the “younger generation to be very careful about the words they use and the kind of insults or remarks they make against people”.
Das also urged the police to “remain calm and not misuse their powers for any political ends”.
Reacting to FIRs being filed against several young protesters in recent days, Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said on Friday that Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah “cannot threaten” Gen Z into silence.
“First you broke their bones,” Gandhi said on social media, referring to the Delhi Police’s crackdown on protesters on July 20. “Now you are filing FIRs and taking down their accounts. You are India’s past. Be careful about how you treat India’s future.”
The FIR against Ruchika Singh was based on a complaint by Ghaziabad resident Smriti Singh. The complaint alleged that Ruchika Singh used purportedly abusive and objectionable language about Modi on social media which not only “undermine the dignity of the constitutional office”, “but also deliberately intended to spread hatred and disrupt public peace”, The Indian Express reported.
This came two days after the Delhi Police registered a first information report against X for allegedly objectionable and defamatory posts about Modi on the social media platform.
A case was registered at the Special Cell’s Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations unit under charges of criminal intimidation, public mischief and defamation.
The police had also written to X seeking that the “derogatory, malicious and defamatory content” about “constitutional heads” be removed from the platform.
It had asked the social media platform to provide details of the account from which the content was posted, including the holder’s name, address, contact details and email ID. The police also asked for login and logout details along with date and time stamps.
It further directed the platform to preserve details related to the posts or videos for future investigation and provide a certificate under Section 63(4) of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam. The section requires any electronic record submitted as evidence in court to be accompanied by a certificate.
On Monday, The Indian Express reported that notices had been issued to three social media platforms directing them to take down purportedly objectionable content about Modi. The posts were being identified by the police’s social media monitoring team.
The Delhi Police had identified 450 social media accounts that shared alleged deepfake videos and content generated using artificial intelligence during the protests, the newspaper reported.
The content was posted online during the youth protests led by the Cockroach Janta Party to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time, over the alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive exams.
On July 20, thousands joined the protest in Delhi two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital. Their march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by the police. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, fired tear gas shells and pellet gun against the demonstrators.
The police action turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country.
Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.
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