Lieutenant Governor of Delhi VK Saxena, on Tuesday, 10 January, sanctioned the prosecution of Shehla Rashid, the former vice-president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University students' union and a member of All India Students Association (AISA), for two of her tweets from 2019, which allegedly criticised the Indian Army.
The big: The L-G's office, in a statement, said: "Delhi LG VK Saxena grants prosecution sanction against Shehla Rashid, ex-Vice President of JNUSU & member of AISA, for making 2 tweets about the Indian Army aimed at promoting enmity between different groups & indulging in acts prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony."
The sanction pertained to a case registered on 3 September 2019 by the Delhi Police Special Cell, under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), based on a complaint made by Alakh Alok Srivastava, an advocate.
Why you must read on: In his complaint, Srivastava lists two tweets posted by Rashid on 18 August 2019, in which she claimed that the armed forces in Kashmir were "entering houses at night" and ransacking them. Rashid also alleged that four men in the Valley were "tortured" by the army.
Srivastava, in the complaint, stated that the "accused is deliberately and intentionally spreading the aforesaid 'FAKE NEWS’ with the intention to incite violence to malign the image of our revered Indian Army nationally as well as internationally to create unrest in the Union Territory of J&K and in other parts of the country."
And then? The allegations made by Rashid were later rejected by the army, saying that such "unverified and fake news are spread by inimical elements and organizations to incite unsuspecting population."
The proposal for the prosecution sanction was put forward by the Delhi Police and backed by the Home Department.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)