Engineering Student Gets 5-Year Jail Term For Celebrating Pulwama Attack

BENGALURU — A special court in Bengaluru has jailed an engineering student for five years over derogatory Facebook posts about the Pulwama militant attack, police said.

The Central Crime Branch (CCB) said on Monday that the resident of Kacharaknahalli in Bengaluru Faiz Rasheed has been in jail since his arrest in February 2019 after his bail applications were rejected.

Faiz Rasheed, who was a third-semester engineering student, was arrested over his February 14, 2019, Facebook posts that celebrated the deaths of 40 Central Reserve Police Force. (CRPF) jawans in an attack in Jammu and Kashmir.

His phone was seized and police got it investigated by a forensic science lab.

The chargesheet has been filed under Indian Penal Code sections (IPC) 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the grounds of religion), 124A (sedition) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) and section 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The attack on the CRPF convoy took place in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on February 14, 2019, in which 40 personnel had died. A suicide bomber had rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into the bus. The convoy had 78 buses in which around 2,500 personnel were travelling from Jammu to Srinagar.

Days after the attack, the Indian Air Force on February 26 carried out multiple aerial strikes at JeM militant camps in Pakistan’s Balakot, killing a “large number” of militants and destroying their infrastructure.

Earlier in April this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had declared ‘militant’ under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) of the mastermind of the attack”>Pulwama attack.

The MHA in their notification issued on April 11, 2022, designated Jaish-e-Mohammad’s Mohiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir, a key conspirator of the 2019 terror attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy at Pulwama.

The Central Government believes that Mohiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir is involved in militancy and Mohiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir should be notified as a terrorist under the UAPA Act, notification reads further. — (ANI)