'...as if not Indian': Bengaluru court sentences man to 5 years over FB posts on Pulwama attack

A special court in Karnataka's Bengaluru has sentenced a 22-year-old man to five years in imprisonment for making derogatory remarks on Facebook following the 2019 Pulwama terror attack against CRPF jawans. The accused Faiz Rasheed had been in jail for three-and-a-half years. The court found him guilty of promoting enmity and destroying evidence.

Rasheed celebrated the attack in which over 40 CRPF personnel had died and mocked the Indian Army. He made around two dozen such remarks. 

The court said the accused made derogatory posts on his Facebook account supporting the suicide attack made on CRPF Jawans at Pulwama with an intention to promote enmity between different groups on grounds of religion. It said the act was prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religions. 

It also noted that the accused posted the comment with the intention to disrupt the sovereignty and integrity of India. 

The defence said since the man was 19 at the time of making the comments, he should be released. The court, however, refused as -- it said-- his act was deliberate. 

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"The accused has not made derogatory comments one or two times. He made comments on all the posts made by all the news channels on Facebook. Moreover, he was not an illiterate or ordinary man. He was an engineering student at the time of the commission of the offence and he made the posts and comments intentionally on his Facebook account," the court observed.

"He commented more than 24 times and he celebrated the death of the great souls as (if) he is not an Indian. Therefore, in the opinion of the court, if three years imprisonment is imposed for the offence punishable under section 153A and 201 of IPC respectively and five years imprisonment is imposed for the offence punishable under section 13 of UA (P) Act, it is proportionate to the crime committed by the accused," it said deciding the quantum of punishment.

With inputs from PTI