[ad_1]
A student spent five months in an Indian prison on a WhatsApp message that he said he did not send.
According to local reports, the 21-year-old man was charged with sedition because of "objectionable" content.
The police alleged that the man was the director of the WhatsApp group, when a complaint was filed.
His family claims that he was named "default administrator" only after the original administrators fled the group.
Junaid Khan, a student from the city of Talen in the central state of Madhya Pradesh in India, was arrested on February 14. According to local reports, the charges stem from a message that was transmitted in a WhatsApp group of which it was a part, leading to being charged with sedition.
The BBC has confirmed that Mr. Khan has spent the past five months in prison, although the nature of the "objectionable" message is not yet clear.
According to the Times of India, the police arrested Mr. Khan for being the director of the WhatsApp group at the time the case was brought to their attention. The family of the arrested man said that it was only because two other members of the group were gone.
One of these people would have posted the offensive message and also reportedly been arrested.
Rajgarh police told the newspaper that the force "checked whether other persons were also admins of the same group"
Mob lynching
According to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and IT Act Social media groups admins can They are liable to prison for sharing messages considered offensive religious or political.
With at least 200 million active users per month in the country, WhatsApp is often at the center of these arrests.
in place to prevent social media users from inciting violence, such as the wave of murders that has spread across India in recent months.
Critics say the police tend to use the law to suppress freedom of speech. Last Friday day, the company owned by Facebook announced that it would limit the number of message transmissions in India, to curb the spread of false information on its platform.
The announcement came after a series of mob lynching was linked to messages circulating on WhatsApp groups.
[ad_2]
Source link
