A 21 year old Junaid Khan, a BSc student from Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh district, has been languishing in jail for the past five months because of a WhatsApp message that someone else forwarded to a group.
Khan was arrested in February and booked under the IT Act and IPC Section 124 A (sedition). But Khan’s family has refuted the allegations saying that he is paying the price for ending up as the “default admin” of the group. The actual admin, Irfan, left the group after posting the objectionable content, the family claims.
“Junaid was a member of the group, but not the admin. When the incident happened, he was in Ratlam. It was then that the admin left the group and Junaid became admin by default. He was not the admin when the post was originally shared,” Junaid’s cousin, Farukh Khan, said.
The police have said that the family needs to produce evidence proving Khan’s innocence.
Junaid couldn’t write his exams this year, for he was booked under section 124 A (Sedition), and the court denied him the bail, Junaid’s cousin, Farukh told The Times of India.
The daily also reported that when the police were apprised of the family’s claims, they said Junaid’s family didn’t say any such thing at the time of arrest. “Now, after the challan has been put up in court, they say he was the ‘default admin’.”
“Junaid was the admin of the group when the matter reached us,” Pachore police station in-charge, Yuvraj Singh said.
Rajgarh Superintendent of police Simala Prasad backed Yuvraj, adding that they were verifying if there were other admins on the same group.
