Overview

• A division bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad made the oral remarks while hearing the 19-year-old engineering student’s quashing plea.
• The court said academic performance and an apology are not grounds to quash the case and added that mens rea is irrelevant at this stage.
• Chief Justice Chandrashekhar observed that deletion of the Instagram repost could aggravate and complicate the situation rather than mitigate it.
• The judges directed Additional Public Prosecutor Mankunwar Deshmukh to submit the case diary in a sealed cover and adjourned the matter for two weeks.
• The student was arrested by Pune’s Kondhwa police in May after reposting a Reformistan post critical of the government; an earlier vacation bench had ordered her release and allowed her to sit for exams after her college’s rustication.