Section 505 of the IPC and Section 66 and 67 of the IT Act have become handy weapons for the government and police to gag the voices of young Indians on social media.
Last week the Uttar Pradesh police arrested the Delhi-based journalist Prashant Kanojia for a tweet that UP CM Adityanath did not like. Dozens of others have suffered a similar fate in UP and other parts of India. They posted something on social media that some powerful person somewhere did not like and ended up behind bars, often for months. Last September, Naushad, a young man from Varanasi, was arrested for a Facebook post.
The post didn’t say who it was written for and did not have a photograph attached with it either. But it was posted on the day former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee died and Naushad’s family said that local BJP leaders quickly made an issue out of it. Naushad denied writing the post and said that someone else posted it to get him into trouble. The post's language was arguably in bad taste but broke no law. Similar comments about Vajpayee's role in the Babri Masjid demolition were made by analysts following his death, without any cases being filed against anyone. Yet Naushad ended up spending more than three months in jail. And the case against him is still continuing. Naushad speaks to The Wire in this exclusive interview about his ordeal.