16-year-old Assam YouTuber Detained Twice for Mocking PM Modi
The boy was critical of the BJP in the video for its commitment to amend India’s Citizenship Act.
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A 16-year-old Assam boy, who had uploaded a video on YouTube mocking several BJP leaders, including Prime minister Narendra Modi and state Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, was detained twice last week after workers from the ruling party filed complaints against him at several police stations.
A resident of Assam's Golaghat district, the boy was critical of the BJP in the video for its commitment to amending India's Citizenship Act, news website Scroll.in reported.
The Bill, first introduced in the lower house of the parliament in 2016, amends the Citizenship Act, 1955 to make illegal Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship.
The boy is a regular YouTuber but has deactivated his account since this incident.
On 23 May, the 16-year-old was first apprehended for the first in his home district, Golaghat. The boy has been booked under section 500 (defamation and public mischief) and 505 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Indian Penal Code.
“We have forwarded him to the Justice Juvenile Board where was put in the observation home for a while and let go,” Scroll quoted Golaghat police’s additional superintendent Dhrubajyoti Bora as saying.
Rupam Goswami, BJP's Assam spokesperson, said that the law will take its own course and that the party didn't take the decision of filing complaints at different police stations. On the other hand, Congress spokesperson said that even if the language used in the video was offensive, there was nothing wrong with the content of the video. The 16-year-old, while interacting with reports post his release, regretted his remarks.
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