Shehla Rashid booked for sedition over her tweets on Kashmir situation

The Delhi Police said on Friday they have booked former Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Shehla Rashid on charges of sedition, promoting enmity and intentions to cause riots.

The first information report (FIR) was filed against her on Tuesday based on a complaint by a Supreme Court lawyer, Alakh Alok Srivastava, against a series of her tweets.

The FIR mentions that in her tweets on August 17, the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement leader alleged that after the withdrawal of J&K’s special status, “armed forces are entering houses at night, picking up boys, ransacking houses, deliberately spilling ration on the floor, mixing rice with oil etc”.

She was booked under IPC sections 124A (sedition), 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief).

“The FIR is frivolous, politically motivated and a pathetic attempt to silence me. I am a petitioner in the constitutional challenge to the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and our petition in the Supreme Court makes a very strong case for the restoration of the same. In my tweets, I have clearly mentioned that these are based on information received from people in the state,” Rashid said.