Rush Hour: Ex-bureaucrat booked for X post, Hindutva influencer held for assault at protest & more

Former civil servant Ashish Joshi, who was picked up during his morning walk on Wednesday by plainclothes police personnel and interrogated for several hours, said on Friday that a first information report had been registered against him for a social media post. It was filed under sections pertaining to provocation with the intent to cause a riot.

Sharing a video posted by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Joshi asked if Section 192 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, under which he was charged, would also be invoked against the Hindutva party as the clip “clearly meets the threshold of provocation”.

The video posted by the BJP had called on its state units to “rip apart the propaganda” of ‘dimagi Naxals’, or persons with “Naxal mentality”. Read on.

‘Dimagi naxals’: The freedom to disagree is a political right – and is economically valuable, writes Freddy Thomas

The Delhi Police have detained a Hindutva influencer who allegedly assaulted the father of a student activist during the youth protests at Jantar Mantar. This came after a row sparked by a purported video of the influencer, Swatantra Bharadwaj, claiming that a call from Delhi minister Kapil Mishra helped him avoid arrest.

On July 23, Sanjay Kumar, the father of student activist Nishu Aazad, was assaulted at Jantar Mantar during...

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