[A
formal complaint brought by the police said a post on Mr. Bhat’s Facebook page
had called for India to withdraw from Kashmir, which is divided between India
and Pakistan, and had shown the flags of China and Pakistan flying in the
background, as well as masked men holding black flags.]
By Suhasini Raj and Ellen Barry
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An Indian patrol on a
street in Srinagar, Kashmir, on Tuesday. Credit Tauseef
Mustafa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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NEW
DELHI — The police in
central India have charged a man with sedition, a colonial-era offense that can
result in life imprisonment, based on Facebook content he shared or posted
calling for India to withdraw from the Himalayan region of Kashmir.
The man, Tauseef Ahmad Bhat, 29, a Kashmiri
engineer working at a mobile phone company in the central Indian state of
Chhattisgarh, was arrested on Wednesday, accused of “liking, sharing and
posting anti-India content on Facebook,” said Amresh Mishra, superintendent of
the police in the district where the arrest occurred.
A formal complaint brought by the police said
a post on Mr. Bhat’s Facebook page had called for India to withdraw from
Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan, and had shown the flags
of China and Pakistan flying in the background, as well as masked men holding
black flags.
Another post, the complaint said, displayed a
caricature of a hand with a broom, shooing away a mouse rendered in the colors
of the Indian flag, with the caption, “Get out from Kashmir.” The complaint
also said that Mr. Bhat had posted material critical of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi of India.
Mr. Mishra, who oversaw the arrest on
Wednesday after bringing the complaint on Tuesday night, said that the charges
were based solely on Mr. Bhat’s Facebook posts and that Mr. Bhat “was not found
to be involved in any other activity.” He said that “certain members of civil
society” had identified the Facebook posts and reported them to the police.
“These things are and may be normal in
Kashmir, but not in this part of the country,” he said.
Mr. Bhat could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Mishra said that Mr. Bhat, who has a
master’s degree in engineering, was apprehended on a train headed for the city
of Jammu, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He said that the train was
stopped after it crossed into a neighboring state and that Mr. Bhat was brought
back to Chhattisgarh.
The arrest was prompted by activists from a
right-wing Hindu group, the Bajrang Dal. They were scouring social media on
Tuesday evening, looking for content harmful to India’s image, when they came
across Mr. Bhat’s posts, according to Ratan Yadav, 42, coordinator of the
organization in the area.
“I immediately instructed my local workers,
the young lovers of Hinduism, to do one thing: take screenshots,” Mr. Yadav
said. “Mr. Bhat has abused the army, the police and India in the posts that he
has liked and shared.”
“He has been abusive of the thing” that
matters most, Mr. Yadav said, “Bharat Mata, or Mother India.”
Mr. Mishra said that the activists “have a
right to protest” and that he filed the complaint against Mr. Bhat on Tuesday
night.
The law against sedition, which the British
colonial administration introduced in India, can be used against anyone who
“brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to
excite dissatisfaction towards, the government established by law.”
The Constitution protects freedom of speech
and expression but with exceptions, among them speech that undermines “the
sovereignty and integrity of India.” Governments in the country have broadly
used sedition charges, often for political gain. In 2012, a cartoonist was
charged with sedition for posting a satirical drawing on a website. In 2015,
the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional one statute used against him,
section 66a of the IT Act, which made it a criminal act to post offensive
material using the internet.
Sedition, however, remains on the books in
India, as it does “across post-colonial Asia,” said Karuna Nundy, a Supreme
Court lawyer who argued and won the case striking down section 66a. “They are
batons that independent governments in India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore and
many other countries decided to keep.”
She added that the reasoning used to strike
down section 66a, which distinguished advocacy from incitement and warned against
the “chilling effect” of an overbroad law, applies equally to sedition.
Mr. Yadav, the Hindu activist, said that Mr.
Bhat, whom he does not know but has tracked on Facebook, “formed a group of
Kashmiris and, while living on Indian soil, he is talking of dividing India.”
“Anti-India activities have gone up on social
media of late, and Kashmiris are using it to the hilt to further an anti-India
agenda,” he said. “We are keeping watch.”
He added that his organization had mobilized
to “save cows from the Muslims and whoever else might be smuggling or
slaughtering them” and that it had ensured “the culprits are punished.”
Follow Suhasini Raj @suhasiniraj and Ellen
Barry @EllenBarryNYT on Twitter.
Suhasini Raj reported from New Delhi, and
Ellen Barry from Bangalore, India.