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JNU Scholar Shehla Rashid Booked By Uttarakhand Police For 'Spreading Rumours' On Twitter

Rashid had said on Twitter that Kashmiri girls were trapped in a Dehradun hostel after an angry mob wanted them to be expelled. The police have denied any such incident despite multiple news reports.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Shehla Rashid, JNU scholar and political activist, was booked by the Uttarakhand police on Monday for her tweet on the harassment of Kashmiri students in Dehradun, in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack.

The Uttarakhand police filed an FIR against Rashid for “spreading rumours and creating panic,” The Times of India reported.

Rashid had said in a tweet on Saturday that Kashmiri girls were trapped in a hostel in Dehradun after an angry mob gathered outside demanding that they be expelled from the hostels.

The police filed an FIR against her based on this tweet.

Rashid tweeted the copy of the FIR against her. It showed that the police have charged her under Sections 153b (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (1) (b) (disturbing public tranquility).

She said, “The price you pay for seeking justice under a BJP govt.”

“We received a complaint against her, following which an FIR has been registered. Through her tweets, she tried to spread rumours and create panic among people about an incident in Dehradun on February 16. In her tweet, Rashid claimed that Kashmiri girls were ‘trapped’ for hours and mobs outside were ‘baying for their blood’, both of which were factually incorrect and aimed at disturbing peace in the area,” Senior superintendent of police Nivedita Kukreti told The Times of India.

Several news outlets including HuffPost India, Scroll and The Indian Express have published detailed reports of Kashmiri students being harassed across north India, including Dehradun.

HuffPost India reported on Saturday that 150 Kashmiri students had to be evacuated from Dehradun in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack.

Jammu and Kashmir Students Organization member Khawaja Itrat told HuffPost India, “Dehradun is the worst. Students were locked in their room for three days. They were having to go to the toilet in polythene bags.”

A 20-year-old student of the Combined Institute of Medical Sciences and Research in Dehradun told HuffPost India, “They were coming to our rooms and telling us to leave. We put locks outside our houses for three days. We did not switch on the light. We did not even remove the curtains for a minute. We did not go outside to get food.”

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.