"Unheard of:" Bombay High Court irked at arrest of student over tweet against Sharad Pawar

The Bombay High Court on Monday deprecated the Maharashtra government for arresting 21-year-old student Nikhil Bhamre after he had tweeted against Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar..A bench of Justices SS Shinde and Milind Jadhav wondered how the tweet could have been the basis for a slew of first information reports (FIRs) against Bhamre.“There are hundreds and thousands of tweets everyday. Will you take cognizance of each and every tweet? We do not want FIRs like these. …Unheard of… some student is kept in custody like this,” the Bench said.The Court expressed its displeasure at the authorities after reading the tweets which led to the FIRs.“Nobody is named on page 48 (which included the primary tweet by Bhamre) and to keep someone in prison for a month. How is this a basis of everything? What gave rise to the FIR as per page 48?” Justice Shinde said..The Court was hearing a writ petition filed by Bhamre seeking quashing of the FIRs registered against him after he posted tweets from his account allegedly aimed at the veteran politician leader.Bhamre has several FIRs registered against him for offences under Sections 153, 153A, (Promoting enmity between groups) 500, 501 (defamation), 504 (criminal intimidation), 505, 506 (statements leading to public mischief) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)..Justice Shinde said that booking the accused in the present case was possibly more damaging to the reputation of Pawar against whom the tweets were made.“If you start taking actions like this, then you end up damaging the name of the person who has received second highest civilian award (Pawar). Even the towering personality (Pawar) will not like that such student being kept in jail. We do not want the towering personalities reputation should go down,” the judge opined.Before concluding the hearing, Justice Shinde directed the public prosecutor to take instructions from the State Home Department and make a statement of no objection for releasing Bhamre from custody.“In our humble opinion grace of the state will be saved if you come and make this statement” the Bench said in conclusion.The plea will be heard again on June 16.