The Badami police arrested a 24-year-old youth on Saturday for allegedly posting an obscene photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media.
According to Badami Sub Inspector Kilari, Kayum Abdul Sattar Befari had uploaded a photo on Facebook of the Prime Minister being urinated on.
Angered by the image, BJP Yuva Morcha President Muthu Ullagaddi filed a complaint with the police.
The police have booked a case against Abdul Sattar under section 153 (wantonly giving provocation, punishment for defamation and printing matter known to be defamatory) and section 67 of the Information Technology Act (punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form), Kilari said.
Ullagaddi had also demanded that six other people who had liked the photo must also be held and booked.
However, the police said that action cannot be taken for only liking an image on social media. "We cannot take any action against the six people as section 66(a) was quashed and a Supreme Court verdict had held that liking an obscene photo does not amount to criminal intimidation," SI Kilari said.
This is not the first instance in which men from Karnataka have faced legal action for circulating morphed pictures on social media.
In June this year, a man from Vijayapura district was booked for promoting feelings of disharmony or enmity for morphing a photo of a dog urinating into Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s mouth.
On May 17, a man from Koppal was arrested for posting a picture on Facebook that showed Modi bowing at the feet of AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi’s brother Akbaruddin.
In March, a man from Bagalkot was arrested for circulating a morphed image showing the upper body of Mohan Bhagwat on the lower body of a woman dressed in tight pants and high heels.