A 23-year-old engineering student from Bengaluru has been sentenced to five years imprisonment for celebrating the Pulwama attacks that took the lives of CRPF jawans.

A special court on Monday charged the student Faiz Rasheed, a resident of Kacharkanahalli in Bengaluru guilty of celebrating on social media, the Pulwama suicide bombing that took place in 2019. 

He has been in jail since the incident as bail applications were rejected. Rasheed had passed 23 comments on various media handles that carried the news about the killings and passed celebratory remarks.

The order was passed by justice Gangadhara C M of the Additional City Civil & Sessions Judge (Special Judge for trial of NIA Cases) who refused to make any exemptions for his good conduct. Calling it a deliberate act, the court observed, “The accused has not made derogatory comments one or two times. He made the comments to all the posts made by all the news channels on Facebook.

“Moreover, he was not illiterate. He was an engineering student at the time the offence was committed, and he posted these comments intentionally on his facebook account.”   

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

It maybe recollected that the attack on the CRPF convoy at Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on February 14, 2019, saw a suicide bomber ram an explosive-laden vehicle into the bus which was ferrying the army personnel. 40 died in the incident. Soon after the, the Indian Air Force carried out aerial strikes at JeM terror camps in Pakistan’s Balakot, killing an undisclosed number of terrorists and destroying their camps.