Bail plea said he published the tweet to raise concerns regarding the news which was covered by prominent news agencies and personalities.
Prashant Kumar Umrao. (ippatel/Twitter)
The Delhi High Court on Tuesday, 7 March, granted transit anticipatory bail to BJP’s Uttar Pradesh spokesperson Prashant Kumar Umrao in a case filed by the Tamil Nadu police for tweeting false information on the alleged attacks on migrant workers in the state.
Umrao was granted bail till 20 March to approach a court in Tamil Nadu.
“I am of the view that the applicant should be granted reasonable time to approach the territorial court concerned,” Justice Jasmeet Singh said.
“The application is allowed. He is granted transit anticipatory bail till 20 March to approach the competent territorial court,” the justice added.
In his petition seeking transit anticipatory bail, Umrao admitted to falling prey to fake news.
“The applicant himself became a victim of fake news and only published the aforementioned tweet to raise concerns regarding the news which was being covered by prominent news agencies and personalities,” Live Law reported, quoting the petition.
While allowing his application, the high court directed him to provide his permanent address and mobile number to Tamil Nadu’s counsel, besides sharing his live Google pin location.
The Thoothukudi police in Tamil Nadu filed an FIR against Umrao under sections 153 (giving provocation with intent to cause riot), 153A, 504 (intentional insult to provoke breach of the peace), and 505 (statements conducing to public mischief) of the IPC.
On 23 February, Umrao allegedly tweeted that 12 workers from Bihar were hanged to death in Tamil Nadu.
“15 people of Bihar were hanged in a room in Tamil Nadu for speaking Hindi and 12 have sadly died. After that, Tejaswi Yadav shamelessly celebrated birthday party with Stalin in Tamil Nadu,” the tweet reportedly said.
Incidentally, Umrao is the standing counsel for the state of Goa in the Supreme Court.
Umrao’s application for bail said fact-checkers found that the video clips shared on social media were from a different period and were not related to violence in Tamil Nadu.
It was also found out that the news about Bihari migrant workers hanged to death for speaking Hindi was fake, the plea added.
Umrao later deleted the tweet.
Several fake, old, unrelated, or misrepresented videos with false claims that migrants were being attacked and killed in Tamil Nadu were circulated by some Hindi media and several leaders of the BJP, especially from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, amplified them on social social media.
Despite multiple clarifications from the Tamil Nadu police and verifications by independent fact-checkers, the misrepresented videos with false claims continued in circulation, leading to a political slugfest.
Several Hindi media houses such as Dainik Bhaskar, ABP Bihar, Punjab Kesari Bihar-Jharkhand, Zee Bihar-Jharkhand used the same unrelated videos.
The Tamil Nadu police said on 4 March that cases have been filed against several people, including journalists, for spreading false information.
The police said special teams have been formed on the orders of the Director General of Police. Migrant workers from Hindi-speaking states are living in peace in Tamil Nadu and they are safe, the police said.
The Cyber Crime Wing of the Tamil Nadu Police on Sunday, 5 March, booked state BJP chief K Annamalai for instigating hatred and violence by peddling disinformation on the migrant workers’ issue.
However, In an exclusive interview with South First on Monday, 6 March, Tamil Nadu BJP vice-president Narayanan Thirupathy said that the party condemned fake news, even when it came from its own Bihar unit.
He, however, added that fake news that triggered panic among migrant north Indian workers originated in Tamil Nadu.
The unsubstantiated allegation, spread on social media, said the Hindi-speaking population was being targeted in Tamil Nadu.
“For the past two years, leaders like T Velmurugan, Naam Tamilar chief coordinator Seeman, and several DMK leaders such as Dayanidhi Maran and ministers have been abusing and degrading Hindi-speaking migrant workers as panipoori-walas and roti-walas,” the BJP leader told South First.
“This kind of hatred against these people is the root cause of the issue,” he claimed.
Advocates Kushal Kumar and Harsh Ahuja, representing Umrao, submitted before the court that he has an apprehension that he could be arrested and hence required a reasonable time to approach the territorial jurisdictional court seeking bail.
Initially, the petitioner’s counsel sought relief for 12 weeks. However, the court said it cannot allow it and could grant the anticipatory bail only for the time required for him to go to Chennai and approach the court concerned.
“At least give me six to eight weeks. I am being witch-hunted. I am a young lawyer with a practice of only six years,” Kumar submitted on behalf of Umrao.
Umrao’s counsel claimed that the police called his clerk to some place on some pretext on Monday and forced him to disclose the whereabouts of the BJP spokesperson.
Senior advocates Sanjay Hedge and Joseph Aristotle, appearing for Tamil Nadu, said Umrao has been allegedly tweeting false information and later deleting it.
Tamil Nadu’s counsel argued that the allegations against the petitioner are grave and there can be nothing more anti-national than this as he was trying to “break” India.
They further said there are direct flights to Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) and one-stopover flights to Thoothukudi. Hence he should have directly approached the territorial jurisdictional court instead of moving the Delhi High Court.
Umrao, in his petition filed also through advocates Vishal Rai and Aditya Kapoor claimed that the FIR has been wrongly registered against him following certain tweets which he posted on Twitter based on the reports by national news agencies.
“The applicant (Umrao) only gained the knowledge of the said FIR through a press release of respondent No. 1 (state of Tamil Nadu) and several news articles which have been recently published, covering the action initiated by respondent No. 1 in response to similar tweets and news articles,” the plea said.
The petition said it is clear that the provisions under which the FIR has been registered against Umrao are not even prima facie attracted in the present case, and he is merely being made a “scapegoat”.
“The applicant is a victim of political rivalry as he is associated with a different political party. The applicant intends to avail legal remedies under Section 438 of the CrPC before the courts in Tamil Nadu having jurisdiction in the subject FIR. However, he is having grave apprehension that before he could avail such legal remedies, he would be arrested by the Tamil Nadu police in connection with the FIR,” it said.
(With PTI inputs)
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