AMN / NEW DELHI
The Supreme Court today granted Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad interim bail subject to stringent provisions.
The court said that he cannot write or deliver a speech on the issues which are subject matters of this case.
Bar and Bench quoted the court as having said, “He is retrained from making any comments on the crisis recently faced by India which was a terrorist attack on Indian soil or the counter response given by our nation.”
Khan was also asked to surrender his passport.
The Supreme Court bench led by Justice Surya Kant said that it was convinced upon reading the posts that “no case of staying the investigation is made out.”
It then said that “to understand the complexity and for proper appreciation of the language used in the post,” it was going to direct Haryana’s director general of police to constitute a special investigation team of three Indian Police Service officers who do not belong to Haryana or Delhi. This SIT shall be headed by an inspector general of police and one of its members will be a women officer, the court said.
Haryana police on May 18 arrested Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad under charges that point to sedition and for hurting religious sentiments complaint for his comments on India’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan.