MUMBAI: The vacation bench of Bombay high court on Monday postponed to Tuesday a petition seeking interim bail filed by a second-year engineering college student from Pune arrested for her social media post on Indo-Pak hostilities amid Operation Sindoor. The student has also challenged her rustication from college as being “arbitrary and unlawful”. She is currently lodged in Yerwada central prison in Pune.The woman’s advocate, Farhana Shah, on Monday appealed for urgent hearing citing her ongoing semester examinations, saying the student’s liberty was snatched. Shah said the action for “a social media post expressing personal opinions” was taken without affording her any hearing. “This was in gross violation of principles of natural justice and her fundamental rights to equality, freedom of expression, and life,” the advocate said. Shah argued that it was only a repost with any intention, which she later deleted.On May 7, the student had reposted a social media post that was critical of Indian govt in the then-ongoing hostilities with Pakistan following Pahalgam terror attack. Her petition says she deleted the post within two hours of posting it and that she received a “barrage of threatening and abusive messages on social media”.She was arrested on May 9 by Kondhwa police in an FIR invoking offences including BNS Section 152 that criminalises actions that threaten sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India. Her college sent a letter of rustication the same day to her parents, removing her immediately after terming her an “anti-national”. After a magistrate rejected her bail plea on May 16, she approached HC as her semester 4 exams were due to start on May 24.
