A standard 11 student in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh has been arrested and sent to 14 days of judicial remand, after Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan's media in-charge Fasahat Ali Khan filed a complaint with the police claiming that the student posted an offensive message about a particular community on Facebook and attributed it to Khan, reports The Times of India. It's not yet clear how old the student is. The student has been booked under Section 66A of the IT Act and some other sections related to disrupting public peace and communal harmony. The report mentions that police didn't follow rules at the time of arresting the boy, who was apparently first arrested on Monday and produced in court the following day. The boy's family members have claimed that he only shared the post and not write it. It's worth noting that this isn't the first such arrest over an alleged objectionable Facebook post related to Azam Khan in Uttar Pradesh. In August 2013, Dalit writer and social activist Kanwal Bharti had also been arrested after he posted a critical comment on Facebook about the suspension of IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal. A disturbing history of damaging dissent in India This case once again illustrates the issue with the draconian IT Act (2008): A number of cases of netizens arrested under Section 66A for posts on Facebook and Twitter have come up over the past 2-3 years: - There was the Palghar case in November 2012, in which Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan were arrested for…
