A teenaged boy was sent to 14 days judicial custody by a magistrate court in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur district for allegedly sharing a post on Facebook and attributing it to Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan.
Vicky Khan, the class 11 student of Bareilly's Woodrow School, was arrested by Rampur police on Monday evening from his home and produced before a magistrate court on Tuesday. Thereafter, he was sent to Rampur district jail, according to Zee News.
The boy was arrested after Azam's media in-charge Fasahat Ali Khan lodged an FIR at the police station on Sunday. The court will hear Vicky's bail plea on Thursday.
"I informed the police that this person has posted controversial and inflammatory post in the name of Mr Khan which is a lie. It has hurt the feelings of both Hindus and Muslims and maligns Mr Khan's image," NDTV quoted Fasahat as syaing.
Vicky has been booked under Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act and sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc.), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 505 (public mischief) of the IPC.
The police said that the student has been arrested for the post that allegedly contains derogatory language against a certain community and has been attributed to the UP minister.
"The Facebook post carried derogatory language against a community and was wrongly attributed to Azam Khan," The Times of India quoted Ganj Kotwali SHO Dinesh Kumar Sharma as saying.
However, the boy claimed that he had just shared the post and not uploaded it on Facebook. He also said that he had no idea what the post meant. "During questioning, he told us that he did not understand the real meaning of what he was posting,'' Rampur Superintendent of Police Sadhna Goswami said.
The student's father claimed that the police lied to them as they had promised to release his son after he was produced before the minister in Rampur.
"Police kept us in the dark. On Monday evening they raided our house and took away our son, saying that he had uploaded some objectionable post on the social networking site against Azam Khan. They also told us that he will be released only after being produced before the minister in Rampur," Vicky's father said.
