Bombay High Court grants interim relief to student held for tweet on Sharad Pawar

“A student who has been in jail for over a month cannot be countenanced. Some element of public interest is involved,” said a division bench led by Justice Nitin Jamdar and Justice N R Borkar while granting bail to Bhamre. The state government submitted that it has not challenged the bail order of a trial court.

Bhamre, who comes from a farmer’s family in Dindori, was arrested last month in Nashik city where he is pursuing his graduation. Bhamre, who does not have any prior criminal record, was an RSS worker earlier. The police said that he had made several such comments in the past also.

The student, while not naming Pawar, had tweeted in Marathi: “Time has come for Baramati’s Gandhi… to create Nathuram Godse of Baramati.” Baramati town in Pune district is Pawar’s home turf.

On June 13, a division bench, led by Justice S S Shinde, had sought to know from the state home department if it would not oppose Bhamre’s release from custody, adding the “state’s grace will be saved” if it makes a statement in that regard.

“If you start taking actions like this, then you end up damaging the name of the person who has received the second-highest civilian award (Padma Vibhushan). Unheard like this that some student is kept in custody like this. Even the towering personality will not like that such a student be kept in jail. There are hundreds and thousands of tweets made every day. Will you take cognisance of each and every tweet? We do not want FIRs like these,” the bench had orally told the state government lawyer, without naming Pawar.

Bhamre, in his plea filed through advocates Anirudh Ganu and Hare Krishna Mishra, claimed that “police officers are hand-in-glove with the persons in power and facilitating their purpose of vindictively harassing petitioner by filing multiple complaints in an organised and synchronised manner and moving him from one jurisdiction to another endlessly”.

He added that section 153A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) could not be levelled against him since there was no enmity being promoted between different classes with his comments. Advocate Subhash Jha, representing Bhamre, sought that his client be released on bail and said that FIRs violate his fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression.

Jha argued that notices under section 41A of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which mandates that the investigating officer would have to issue a notice of appearance before an arrest is made. He said that the tweet was only a reaction to what a certain politician had said and prima facie there was no case against the petitioner.

However, chief public prosecutor Aruna Pai for the state opposed the plea stating that Bhamre had previous antecedents and he should not be granted interim relief. When the bench queried with Pai if the state had challenged an order of the trial court granting bail to Bhamre in one FIR, the prosecutor responded in negative.

The bench went on to grant interim relief to Bhamre and posted further hearing after three weeks. A detailed order will be made available in due course.