UP lawyer charged with sedition for tweeting 'objectionably' against CM Yogi Adityanath

A district court lawyer from Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur has been arrested on sedition charges for retweeting a video of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and calling him a ‘terrorist’.  As per reports, Abdul Hannan, the lawyer on Saturday commented on a tweet by the government media advisor Shalabh Mani Tripathi. The lawyer was then arrested on Monday, an official said on Tuesday.

Tripathi had tweeted a video of UP CM Yogi Adityanath’s Vidhan Sabha speech supporting his steps against anti- Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)  protesters in the state. Tripathi captioned the video: “Tum kagaz nahi dikhaoge, aur danga bhi failaoge, to hum lathi bhi chalvayenge, gharbaar bhi bikvayenge aur haan poster bhi lagvayenge (You will not show the papers and will also participate in riots, then we will cane charge, auction your houses and put up posters).” Hannan retweeted Tripathi’s post by calling Adityanath a terrorist. 

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Another man arrested

Earlier on March 16, news agency PTI reported that a 36-year-old man was arrested in Lucknow for allegedly posting an offensive picture of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Facebook, police said. The man, identified as Muqaddar Pahalwan, a resident of Jahangirabad area, has been sent to jail by a local court, the police said.

“A complaint was made against the accused by a Bajrang Dal member here in which he alleged that an edited picture of the chief minister has been posted on Facebook. An FIR was lodged and the accused arrested this morning,” a police official told PTI.

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The FIR has been registered under Information Technology Act sections 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material) and 67A (publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act), the police said. The accused was later produced in the local court which remanded him in 14 days’ judicial custody, the police added.

On February 20, a trader in adjoining Gautam Buddh Nagar’s Greater Noida was arrested for allegedly sharing a Facebook post deemed “offensive” against the chief minister. In June of 2019, two persons were arrested in UP’s Gorakhpur district for allegedly making objectionable comments on social media against Adityanath. Prior to that, three journalists – a Noida-based scribe, a head and an editor of a private TV news channel — were also arrested over “objectionable content” against the chief minister.

(with PTI inputs)

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