The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted anticipatory bail to Bhojpuri singer and satirist Neha Singh Rathore in a case pertaining to a social media post about the terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, Bar and Bench reported.
The court had granted her interim protection from arrest on January 7. On Tuesday, a bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and AS Chandurkar made the interim protection absolute, according to Bar and Bench.
The case against Rathore was filed based on a complaint in Lucknow. The singer and activist was booked under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to endangering national unity and sovereignty, and promoting enmity between groups, as well as under the Information Technology Act.
In the social media post in question, Rathore had said that the April 22 Pahalgam attack was an intelligence and security failure on the part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government. She had also claimed in the video that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would seek votes in Bihar in the name of the attack just as he allegedly did after the 2019 Pulwama terror attack.
After the case was filed, Rathore had moved the Allahabad High Court seeking that the first information report be quashed, but the court rejected her plea. She then approached the Supreme Court, which also declined to set aside the case.
Rathore then approached the High Court again, seeking anticipatory bail. On December 6, the High Court refused to grant her relief, saying that she had made “disrespectful” comments about the prime minister and had posted the video at a crucial time after the terror attack.
The singer eventually moved the Supreme Court.
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