NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Saturday allowed the police to withdraw the prosecution of former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Shehla Rashid in connection with a 2019 sedition case over her tweets about the Indian Army.
Rashid had faced legal action over a series of tweets posted on August 18, 2019, in which she alleged that Army personnel had tortured four men in Jammu and Kashmir’s Shopian district, placing a microphone next to them so that the entire area could hear them scream and be terrorised.
The allegations were based on accounts from individuals who had left Kashmir after the Valley was placed under lockdown following the revocation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. The Delhi Police had registered a sedition case against Rashid in September 2019 based on a complaint by Supreme Court lawyer Alakh Alok Srivastava. The case was lodged under charges of “promoting enmity between different groups” and “acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony.”
The Indian Army had strongly refuted Rashid’s claims, terming them “baseless and unverified.” The Delhi LG’s office had stated that her tweets aimed at “creating religious fault lines” in Jammu and Kashmir.
In 2023, Delhi LG VK Saxena had granted sanction to prosecute Rashid, following a proposal sent by the Delhi Police and supported by the Home Department. The Home Department had also asserted that Rashid’s remarks warranted prosecution under Section 153A of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (formerly IPC), which pertains to offences against public order.