A sessions court in Ahmedabad on June 7 denied filmmaker Avinash Das anticipatory bail in the case of posting home minister Amit Shah’s picture on his social media out of context. Das had last month posted an old photograph of the home minister with Jharkhand IAS officer Pooja Singhal after a huge amount of unaccounted money was recovered from her, and tried to pass it off as a recent picture. Earlier, he had shared on social media an allegedly obscene photograph of a woman wearing the tricolour.
The Bombay-based filmmaker approached the sessions court for legal protection after the Bombay high court refused to grant him transit bail. Describing his sharing of certain pictures on social media as his “mental perverseness”, the sessions court said, “…He is a filmmaker. So it is his prime duty to maintain dignity of the country and give respect to national flag as well as the home minister of India, but he has wilfully uploaded the same on social media.”