The special NIA court on Monday sentenced an engineering student from Bengaluru to five years imprisonment for a social media post supporting the Pulwama terrorist attack. The accused Faiz Rasheed, an engineering student studying in Bengaluru, was arrested by the Bengaluru police in February 2019, over a post on social media hailing the terror attack in Pulwama and criticising the Indian army. He was sentenced to five years in prison and levied a fine of Rs 10,000 by Judge CM Gangadhara of the special court for National Investigation Agency under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
Faiz was remanded in judicial custody in February 2019, he was never granted bail. He was arrested after a suo motu case was filed by the Banaswadi police in Bengaluru and he was charged under section 153A (offence of promoting disharmony, enmity or feelings of hatred between different communities) 124A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code, and also under section 13 of the UAPA Act. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court temporarily suspended the sedition law with the proceedings in all pending cases stayed.
In his Facebook post, Faiz had celebrated the attack in Pulwama on Indian soldiers and described it as a 'trailer of revenge' for mob lynchings and the Ram Mandir agitation, the FIR in the case stated. The police also stated that Faiz's comments could cause enmity between religions. The police had seized the phone which was used to post the comment.
The Pulwama attack refers to the attack on a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethapora in the Pulwama district of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. It occurred on February 14, 2019, months before the Indian general elections. The attack killed 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel as well as the perpetrator—Adil Ahmad Dar—who was a local Kashmiri youth from the same district. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed.