Trouble mounts for Shehla Rashid: A criminal case has been filed against former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Shehla Rashid for allegedly spreading fake news about the Indian Army and the government. According to news agency ANI, the case was filed by Supreme Court lawyer Alakh Alok Srivastava against Rashid. In his complaint, Alok demanded immediate arrest of Rashid, who is a resident of Srinagar.
On Sunday, Rashid claimed on her Twitter account that the Indian armed forces “were entering houses at night, picking up boys, ransacking houses and deliberately spilling rations on the floor”. She even said that in Shopian, four men were called into the Army camp and “interrogated and tortured”.
“A mic was kept close to them so that the entire area could hear them scream, and be terrorised. This created an environment of fear in the entire area,” she tweeted. Shehla later cited a magistrate telling news agency AFP that at least 4,000 people have been arrested in the Valley and most of them were flown out of Kashmir because prisons here have run out of capacity. “A police official told AFP: around 6,000 people were medically examined in Srinagar after they were detained,” her tweet reads.
On Monday morning, she attacked the BJP
“According to BJP, everybody – Omar Abdullah, Shah Faesal, The Wire, Kapil Kak, Swara Bhaskar, Ravish Kumar, NDTV, Shehla Rashid, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kavita Krishnan, Kunal Kamra, Ramachandra Guha, JNU Professors – is funded by Pakistan. Exactly how much money does Pakistan have?!” she asked.
The Indian Army issued a statement on Sunday to rubbish her claims and termed Rashid’s allegations as baseless. It said that the claims made by Rashid are far from the reality in Kashmir.
Rashid had obtained Computer Engineering degree from National Institute of Technology, Srinagar and moved to Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi where she pursued MA in Sociology. She has links with Jammu and Kashmir People’s Movement, a political party in J&K. She was among those who were arrested in February 2016 for allegedly raising anti-India slogans inside the JNU campus.