A Jammu and Kashmir Bank employee was suspended for allegedly reacting with a laughing emoticon to a news story on the chopper crash in which India’s chief of Defence staff General Bipin Rawat died.
Bipin Rawat and his wife, Madhulika Rawat, along with 11 others had died in the helicopter crash on Wednesday in the Katteri-Nanchappanchathram area of Tamil Nadu’s Coonoor district.
At least eight people have been arrested and two booked while one suspended from a government job across the country for their ‘offensive’ social media posts about the death of General Bipin Rawat. However, strict action against such posts has been ensured in Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka and Rajasthan.
A muslim man was arrested soon after the helicopter crash for an Instagram post saying that Rawat had “burnt alive even before entering Jahannum [hell]”. The highest number of arrests was reported from the Rajasthan region. The Karnataka police have booked two people for alleged derogatory posts on Rawat’s death under Section 505 (public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code. The police declared, in a statement, that the remarks made by arrested people had ‘hurt public sentiments’.
Police arrested hundreds of internet users in India recently, which is alarming in regards to snub the ‘freedom of speech’ in the world’s largest democratic country.
Further, hundreds of Indians were arrested and tortured for celebrating Pakistan’s victory against India in a cricket match in October. All of them had been charged under ‘sedition’ and ‘anti-terrorism’ laws.
