A 19-year-old Palghar resident, Sunil Vishwakarma was arrested for posting ‘abusive’ comments against Raj Thackeray on his Facebook page, according to this Indian Express report.
The report states that a mob of MNS workers had gathered outside the boy’s house and took him to the police station. However, the police are exercising caution after their mishandling of the recent case against two girls, and haven’t yet charged him with any particular crime.
What is not clear is how he ‘abused’ Raj Thackeray on the site.
Raj Thackeray in this file photo. Parag Shinde/Firstpost
Kundan Sankhe, president of Thane rural unit of the MNS, has claimed the boy had made “vulgar” comments about Raj Thackeray, and the people of Maharashtra, including women.
“Our Thane rural district MNS student wing president Bhavish complained to police and asked them to investigate the matter. Police are questioning that person,” he said.
However his brother Ramji Vishwakarma told PTI, said “My brother is innocent. He told me that his account
might have been hacked and objectionable comments may have been posted.”
In the case of Shaheen Dhada and Rinu Srinivasan, the two girls were arrested for posting a comment on Facebook that Mumbai should not have shut down on account of Bal Thackeray‘s death. Shaheen had posted the comment on Facebook, while Rinu had ‘liked’ the comment.
The two policemen who undertook the arrests of the two girls have been suspended while the local magistrate who had granted the two girls bail on a surety of Rs 15,000 has been transferred.
This would be yet another instance of a person being targeted for their post on a social media network. In the recent past, one person had been arrested for his tweets against Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti.
Activists campaigning for online freedom have often pointed to ambiguous wording of sections of India’s Information Technology Act which has been misused in order to target people for expressing their opinion.
With inputs from PTI
