CHENNAI: The NIA’s charge that a Madurai native was associating himself with the ISIS and supporting them through social media posts fell through before a trial court in Chennai with the judge ruling that mere contact with an ISIS operative would not indicate support towards the organisation.
In the 93-page judgment, judge KH Elavazhagan said that there was no evidence to show that the accused was a supporter of the ISIS. The prosecution had produced the social media records of the alleged ISIS operative with whom the accused had been in touch with. But these were from 2013, which was well before the period for which the charges were framed against him, the judge said.
The NIA special court on November 11 convicted a Madurai native Abdulla and awarded five years imprisonment for advocating and abetting unlawful activities under Section 13(1)(b) of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The conviction was based on the Facebook posts which were advocating, abetting and inciting. NIA’s case was based on Facebook posts made by Abdulla in 2021 in support of ISIS. According to the agency, he had been in touch with an ISIS operative and wanted to get recruited into the terrorist organisation. The agency also said he was a member of Hizb-Ut-Tahrir (HUT)
However, on November 11, he was acquitted of charges of being a member of and supporting a terrorist organisation (Section 38 and 39 of UAPA) and publishing statements that cause enmity between groups (IPC section 505). The judge also said that HUT was banned by the government in October 2024 and that the alleged crime had taken place prior to that, concluding that the prosecution’s arguments were untenable.
The judgment further stated that the messages and audio uploaded on Facebook did not attract charges under Section 505 of the IPC. The judge also found fault with the prosecution for not marking evidence in a proper manner; some records obtained from Facebook were inadmissible as the firm had not certified it.