Rush Hour: SC to hear Ashoka professor’s plea against arrest, British academic’s OCI scrapped & more

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A day after Ashoka University Associate Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad was arrested for his remarks about the press briefings on Operation Sindoor, the Supreme Court agreed to an early hearing of his petition. The matter will be listed on Tuesday or Wednesday.

In a social media post, Mahmudabad, the head of the university’s political science department, had highlighted the apparent irony of Hindutva commentators praising Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, who had represented the Army during the media briefings about the Indian military operation. He suggested that they should also call for justice for victims of mob lynching and “others who are victims of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hate mongering”.

He has been booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to acts prejudicial to maintaining communal harmony, making assertions likely to cause disharmony, acts endangering national sovereignty and making words or gestures intended to insult a woman’s modesty, among others.

Advocate Kapil Sibal, who mentioned the matter before the court, said that cases were filed against the professor for “an entirely patriotic statement” about the operation by the Indian armed forces. Mahmudabad’s students have described...

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