BENGALURU: Three days after Disha Ravi was arrested under charges of sedition, criminal conspiracy and for creating disharmony among groups, highly-placed sources claimed that she had created a “closed” WhatsApp group on December 6, 2020.
“Nikita Jacob joined the WhatsApp group on December 11. The next day, the Poetic Justice Foundation (PJF), which is a pro-Khalistani outfit founded by Mo Dhaliwal, joined the same group,” they stated.
“It is being investigated as to who included PJF in the WhatsApp group. The Delhi police wanted to question Nikita on the matter on February 12, a day after they had searched her house in the presence of her parents. The police had also made her sign a bound-down notice that the investigating officer would come back the next day to question her. But when the team went to her house, Nikita was not there,” said the source.
On February 13, a team of Delhi special police took the help of Bengaluru police and arrested Disha from her house in the presence of her mother.
After the arrest, the Delhi police had said, “Disha deleted the WhatsApp group after we registered a case against the ‘creators’ of the controversial toolkit.”
The toolkit was posted by climate activist Greta Thunberg, but she had later deleted it.
The authorities claimed that Greta did so on the request of Disha, who sent a message through a WhatsApp chat fearing legal action including being booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
“The police have forensically retrieved the digital evidence from Disha’s phone, which includes her message to Greta asking her to delete the toolkit, which had her name along with Nikita and Shantanu and the WhatsApp group in which Dhaliwal was added,” the source said.
Some Toolkit links lead to anti-India sites
Asked whether the grave charge of sedition (Section 124A of the IPC) was justified against Disha, sources said, “While part of the toolkit was related to protests, it has a large number of hyperlinks to Google Drive, Google Docs and websites.
One of the websites is askindiawhy.com, which has pro-Khalistani and secessionist content. The document has an anti-India action plan. Disha and Nikita edited the toolkit and Shantanu’s mail ID is the owner of this toolkit.”