On Monday, June 13, the Bombay High Court pulled up the Government of Maharashtra over the arrest of a student for alleged defamatory posts against Sharad Pawar, President, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The court also asked if the government will take cognizance of every tweet that it deems offensive.
The court observed that even the veteran politician wouldn't like to see the 21-year-old student in jail, as stated in a report by PTI.
The public prosecutor was directed by a division bench headed by Justice SS Shinde to take instructions from the state home department and let it know if they will be willing to make a no objection statement to the release of the pharmacy student.
A petition was filed by Nikhil Bhamre, a student, challenging the cases lodged against him over the posts and seeking immediate release. It is this petition that the court was hearing.
After pursuing the tweets which were posted by Bhamre on the micro-blogging platform Twitter, the court noted that it did not name anyone.
"Nobody is named and you (government) keep someone in prison for a month. How is this a basis of everything?" Justice Shinde said.
"There are 100s and 1000s of tweets posted every day. Will you take cognizance of each and every tweet? We do not want FIRs like these. Some student is kept in custody like this," the court said.
Justice Shinde further said booking a person in such a case was possibly more damaging to the reputation of Pawar (than the posts themselves).
"If you start taking actions like this, then you end up damaging the name of the person (Pawar) who has received the second-highest civilian award (Padma Vibhushan). Even the towering personality (Pawar) will not like that such a student be kept in jail. We do not want the towering personality's reputation to go down," the judge noted.
While posting the matter for further hearing on June 16, the court directed the prosecutor to take instructions from the Home Department regarding making a no objection statement for releasing Bhamre from custody.
"In our humble opinion, grace of the state will be saved if you come and make this statement," the bench added.
