Bengaluru: A special court in the City convicted an engineering student lodged in prison without bail since 2019 to five years term on charges of sedition, promoting enmity against different communities by posting derogatory Facebook post about the Pulwama terrorist attack and destroying evidence.
The youth identified as Faiz Rasheed, a resident of Bengaluru's Kacharaknahalli was arrested in February, 2019 and was denied bail since then. The third-semester engineering student wrote in Facebook celebrating the deaths of 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans in an attack in Jammu and Kashmir.
Police said his phone was seized and sent for a forensic analysis. Based on the scientific evidence, the chargesheet was filed under Indian Penal Code sections (IPC) 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion), 124A (sedition) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) and section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
However, the trial was not conducted on Section 124A (Sedition) and it was kept in abeyance as per the Supreme Court directions which had kept the provision in suspension. He was awarded three years simple imprisonment for promoting enmity between different religious groups and destroying evidence and five years under the UAPA charge.
The terror attack on a CRPF convoy in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on February 14, 2019 claimed lives of 40 jawans. Terrorists rammed an explosive-laden vehicle in to the convoy leading to an explosion. At the time of attack, the convoy had 78 buses carrying around 2,500 personnel to Srinagar from Jammu. Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama terror attack. A fortnight later, India carried out an airstrike on JeM's Balakot terror training camp in Pakistan.
