.
Bombay High Court on Friday said the case against a 19-year-old Pune student over her social media post on Operation Sindoor cannot be quashed just because she deleted it and apologised, and because she is a bright student. A bench of chief justice Shree Chandrashekhar and justice Gautam Ankhad was hearing the student’s plea to cancel the FIR filed in May.”This is a very serious thing. If at all you are a child studying, this can only be considered for bail. But we cannot quash (the FIR),” Chief justice Chandrashekhar remarked as quoted by Live Law. Her lawyer argued that she had no ill intention and had secured good marks in her exams after getting bail. The court, however, said academic performance or being a “bright student” cannot be grounds to quash the case. It also observed that deletion of the post “aggravates and complicates” the matter.”That’s fine, you are a bright child but that cannot be a ground to quash the FIR,” the chief justice responded.The bench posted the matter for further hearing after two weeks and asked the public prosecutor to submit the case diary. What’s the caseShe had been arrested for reposting an Instagram post from ‘Reformistan’, which criticised the Indian government over Indo-Pakistan hostilities. The student deleted it within hours after facing threats and later apologised.Kondhwa police in Pune registered an FIR on May 9 and arrested the teenager. She was later sent to judicial custody and lodged at Yerwada prison. Her Pune-based engineering college also expelled her immediately.The Bombay high court had earlier rapped the Maharashtra government for arresting her. Calling the reaction “radical”, it questioned why the student was treated as a “criminal” when she had already apologised for the post..
