Kashyap, who was picked up from Bihar, has been lodged in the Madurai Central Prison.
Quashing the detention order, the judges said that the charges and proceedings under the Information Technology Act, framed against Kashyap would continue.
YouTuber Manish Kashyap, the alleged mastermind who reportedly circulated fake videos saying migrant workers were attacked in Tamil Nadu, has been booked under the stringent National Security Act (NSA).
The videos had created an uproar across the country with political parties, especially the BJP, sharing them on social media.
Meanwhile, the Madurai Magistrate Court on Wednesday, 5 April, extended Kashyap’s judicial custody till 19 April. He has been lodged in the Madurai Central Prison
According to sources, the NSA was slapped on the YouTuber on the grounds of disrupting public order.
As per the preventive detention under the NSA, Kashyap has to be in prison for a period of 12 months, which could be extended if the government gathers fresh evidence against him.
Further, Kashyap could appeal before a high court advisory panel but a lawyer won’t be allowed to represent him during the trial.
The right-wing YouTuber Kashyap posted videos on his Twitter handle stating that the migrant workers from Bihar were subjected to torture and even hanged to death in Tamil Nadu for speaking in Hindi.
The Madurai Crime Branch police arrested him from Bettiah in Bihar on 18 March.
Eight FIRs were filed against Kashyap in Tamil Nadu. The Bihar Police have registered 13 cases against him.
The fake videos he posted were widely shared on social media and the Bihar and Tamil Nadu governments were forced to issue clarifications.
After the videos had gone viral, a four-member team of Bihar officials led by Balamurugan IAS visited Tamil Nadu and clarified that there were no such incidents.
Earlier, Kashyap surrendered before Champaran Police in Bihar last month, while the Economic Offence Unit was in the process of attaching his house.
Kashyap has moved the Supreme Court seeking bail and clubbing of all the FIRs filed against him at one place.
He pleaded that the cases filed against him were false and with ulterior motives on the behest of Bihar and Tamil Nadu governments and sought interim relief.
In end-February, several fake videos with false claims that migrants were being attacked and killed in Tamil Nadu were circulated by some social media handles and even by a few Hindi media outlets. These were amplified on social media by several leaders of the BJP, especially those from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Although the Tamil Nadu police as well as DMK leaders issued several clarifications and independent fact-checkers called out the fake news, the videos continued to be in circulation, leading to a political slugfest between the BJP and the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu.
Several mainstream Hindi media outlets like Punjab Kesari Bihar-Jharkhand, Dainik Bhaskar, ABP Bihar, and Zee Bihar-Jharkhand aired or printed the news, and pushed the videos on social media as well.
The Tamil Nadu police said on 4 March that cases have been filed against several people, including journalists, for spreading false information. Among those booked were the CEO and editor of the news website OpIndia.
The police formed special teams to apprehend those booked, even as it stepped up vigilance in areas where Hindi-speaking migrants lived in Tamil Nadu.
The Cyber Crime Wing of the Tamil Nadu Police also booked state BJP chief K Annamalai for instigating hatred and violence by peddling disinformation on the migrant workers’ issue, even as the party vice president blamed the BJP and UP arms of the BJP for spreading fake news without verifying it.
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