BENGALURU: A special court here on Monday held a 23-year-old engineering student guilty of celebrating on Facebook the Pulwama suicide bombing of 2019 and awarded him five years’ simple imprisonment, besides a fine of Rs 25,000.
Any failure on the part of the convict to pay the fine, Faiz Rasheed, a resident of Bengaluru’s Kacharakanahalli, will result in six more months of imprisonment, said Judge CM Gangadhara of the special court for National Investigation Agency and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) cases.
Special public prosecutor GN Arun, who argued for the state, told TOI that the special court convicted Rasheed under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between groups) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence), and section 13 (punishment for unlawful activities) of UAPA.
Refusing to consider releasing the accused on probation of good conduct, the judge said: “The accused was not an illiterate or ordinary man. He was an engineering student at the time of commission of the offence. He made the posts intentionally on his Facebook account. He felt happy about the killing of great souls. Therefore, the offence committed by the accused is against this great nation and heinous in nature.”
