The vacation bench of the Bombay High Court on Tuesday slammed the action of the state government and an engineering institution concerning the arrest of a 19-year-old Muslim student from Maharashtra’s Pune for making a critical post on ‘Operation Sindoor’ on social media.
The court further asked the student’s counsel, Advocate Farhana Shah, to move an appropriate plea seeking her release before the high court, adding that it will hear the matter on Tuesday evening.
Khadija Sheikh, a second-year IT engineering student at Sinhgad College, Kondhwa, Pune, was arrested on May 07 for Instagram stories critical of India’s military action against Pakistan. Along with the Pune city police, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and intelligence agencies joined the probe in the case.
Following the arrest, the Pune-based Sinhgad Academy of Engineering rusticated the student, claiming that she had brought ‘disrepute’ and indicated that she harboured “anti-national sentiments”, posing a “risk to the campus community and society.”
A vacation court division bench of Justices Gauri Godse and Somasekhar Sundaresan was hearing the student’s plea challenging her rustication.
“What is this? You are ruining the life of a student? What kind of conduct this is? Somebody expresses something you want to ruin the life of the student? How can you rusticate? Did you call upon an explanation? What is the purpose of an educational institution?” Justice Gauri Godse asked, according to LiveLaw.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.