You scroll. You see something. You hit share. It’s only a second or less. However, one click of a screen sometimes brings about a legal earthquake.
It has come as a big surprise to academic and author Madhu Purnima Kishwar after the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued this order. They had rejected her plea for anticipatory bail. She’s frantically trying to prevent her getting arrested. The entire saga is about a small 14-second video posted by her on X in April.It’s all about a small 14-second video she posted on X back in April.
Justice Aman Chaudhary wasn’t impressed with her arguments. The judge drew a red line about what happens when people with a lot of followers post explosive information. He emphasized that as a million follower, you have a heavy burden. When things literally go haywire when the content goes up in flames, you aren’t allowed to simply press share and walk away.
The investigation is still in its early stages. However, the court basically ordered Kishwar to pay his due.
A False Massage and a True Police Case
It’s a very disjointed timeline here.
Everything began 12 April. The video was originally posted on a social media platform by a social media influencer from the United States. It displayed a man who was being massaged. In the video, he was not a man but someone named Jaspal Singh Sarai. But, the Internet did what the Internet does. The speculation began that the man in the video was Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The video was posted on Kishwar’s X on April 18. She shared it. The internet erupted. The video immediately got more than 174,000 views. Speculation ran wild.
The Chandigarh Police was not picking on time. They submitted a First Information Report on the very next day. Directed at her, they hurled the book. They sent her to prison on several of the new provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The charges ranged from creating public mischief to making statements to promote enmity between groups, forgery and cheating. They also slapped on charges under the Information Technology Act.
The police were essentially going after a social media post, as if it were a coordinated crime.
The Battle of the Download
The battle in court focused on why the video was on her feed.
Kishwar was represented by its senior advocates Sibal and Sartaj Singh Narula. They created an image of a simple error. They said that she simply retweeted a clip. They saw no harm in it. They were very reliant on her experience. She is an accomplished scholar. She writes books. She has no record of any crime committed. Why act like a tough cop over a retweet? They said that she can’t help what others say under her posts.
The prosecution didn’t take it seriously. Special Public Prosecutor (SPP) for the Union Territory Amit Jhanji replied with technicalities.
He informed the court that this was not a retweet in any way. It turns out that Kishwar herself had downloaded the video from another site on which it was spreading, the police said. Afterwards she directly uploaded it to her X, with her own commentary.
That’s an important one to keep in mind and it alters the meaning of the intent.
Jhanji noted the number of followers of Kishwar as 1.8 million. If she presses post it will be broadcast. He said, “She is spreading absolute misinformation with that huge megaphone. He said that she “defamed the head of the government” especially by her actions. The police even cited a specific comment she had made, indicating that she was aware of eight other such videos that were spreading around.
They also pointed to a big issue for her defense. The police had issued three separate notices to her. They had requested her to enter and participate in the investigation on April 20, April 26 and May 5. She ignored them.
Avoiding criticism and comment.To refrain from making criticism or comments.
Justice Chaudhary examined the facts and gave a very apt reminder of reality.
He explained, in his writing, the distinction between free speech and deliberate trolling. There’s a big difference between providing a constructive critique and throwing in a malicious innuendo that would seek to defame someone,” he said.
Basically, the judge said that it is “not okay to play dumb when you’re famous. Someone who claims to be a scholar and a prominent Internet personality cannot claim not to know what will happen when he posts highly sensitive content, he said.
The court also took notice of her past actions. The police had a status report that she had been posting similar highly charged content over the past six months. This is not an isolated error on the part of the Court.
The judge cautioned that today the bad information travels at light speed. If a person with a large number of followers posts something which is false, it can literally jeopardise the unity of the country. He even proposed that the government urgently required to think about new rules for social media as the perception of the people has become a reality.
The judge refused to grant her a shield against arrest because she had refused to cooperate with police and the investigation continues to work out out who initially made the fake video.
Developing a claim of political revenge.Creating a claim for political revenge.
The ruling failed to silence Kishwar.
Right away she went to the internet to vent her frustration. She described the reasons behind her rejection as “flimsy. She painted the complete police operation as a huge political hit job.
She has noted that a FIR was lodged in Chandigarh. It is a territory of the Union. It falls under the direct control of Union Home Ministry. She strongly urged that the entire case was cooked up from the top to punish her for being a dissenter.
She said that the lawyers had alerted her to this in Chandigarh. She was informed the government wished to make an example of her as a warning to other critics, she said. She even said that even finding a lawyer that will stand up and fight her case in the local courts was very difficult because of the political pressure.
