The Madras High Court on Tuesday granted anticipatory bail to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson and lawyer Prashant Umrao for allegedly spreading false information concerning attacks on Bihari migrant workers.
Justice GK Ilanthiraiyan directed Umrao to file an affidavit with the relevant jurisdictional magistrate promising that “he will not tweet or transmit any messages to encourage hatred amongst different groups on the basis of religion, race, place of birth, domicile, language, and so on.”
The bench further ordered him to report to the local police station twice a day for the following 15 days, and then only as needed for questioning. He was also ordered to execute Rs1 lakh bond and two solvent sureties in the same amount.
Justice Ilanthiraiyan stated that Umrao should have considered the repercussions of his acts given that he was an advocate and a member of a major political party.
According to the FIR, On February 23, Umrao allegedly tweeted that fifteen Biharis had been “hanged in a room in Tamil Nadu for speaking Hindi” and that 12 of them had “unfortunately died.”
The tweet stated that Tejaswi Yadav, the deputy chief minister of Bihar, later brazenly celebrated Stalin’s birthday with him in Tamil Nadu.
For the tweet, the police detained Umrao, and a FIR was filed under Sections 153, 153A, 504 and 505 of the Indian Penal Code.
Umrao refuted posting the claimed tweet in his request for anticipatory bail. According to him, a bogus charge was filed against him as a result of political animosity.
He further asserted before the court that he had done nothing more than retweet tweets that had previously appeared on private news outlets. He had since deleted the tweets after learning that the story was untrue.
The State government disagreed with Umrao’s request and said that his tweets were deliberate attempts to incite conflict and bloodshed. According to the State, Umrao’s tweets caused alarm among Tamil- and Hindi-speaking people in North India and Tamil-speaking people in Tamil Nadu.
It had also informed the Court that Umrao needed to be interrogated while in custody in order to determine whether there was a bigger plot behind the tweets.
“Fortunately, no adverse occurrence or group conflicts between the community of the two States occurred as a result of the claimed Twitter forwarded by the petitioner as per the news reported in the news channel,” Justice Ilanthiraiyan remarked.
The bench at the end of the hearing expressed its hope in Umrao, that as an advocate, he would cooperate with the police in their investigation.
