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BJP youth leader arrested for sharing Mamata Banerjee meme to move Supreme Court

| @indiablooms | May 13, 2019, at 12:00 pm

Kolkata, May 13 (IBNS): Priyanka Sharma, the youth wing leader of Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal who was arrested recently for allegedly morphing or sharing a photograph of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee superimposing  her face over an over-the-top look of Priyanka Chopra at a red carpet event in New York, would move Supreme Court, said media reports on Monday.

The photo was a morphed image of Banerjee photoshopped on actress Priyanka Chopra's Met Gala look. It is not yet clear if she was charged with sharing the meme or morphing it herself.

Priyanka Sharma, a Bharatiya Janata Party Yuva Morcha worker in Howrah, was arrested for having shared a meme on Banerjee, said media reports.  Sharma was sent to 14-day judicial custody by a court. An NDTV report said she is moving the Supreme Court.

According to Indian Express, Sharma has been charged under Section 500 of the IPC (defamation), and Sections 66A (offensive messages) and the non-bailable 67A (punishment for publishing or transmitting of material containing sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.

According to media reports, a police complaint by a TMC leader read that "this act broke the community guidelines and it was being viewed as an issue of violence."

"She not just tries to insult our Hon’ble Chief Minister, but she trying to insult the culture of our Bengal by her post on Facebook and which is Cyber Crime,” the complaint read, according to a daily.

An FIR was lodged against her at Dasnagar Police Station in Howrah district.

While the latest arrest is owing to a morphed photo of Mamata from a controversial outfit worn by a Bollywood actress that was trolled on social media in Twitter, this is not the first such case as a professor from Kolkata was arrested in 2012 for sharing TMC or Mamata Banerjee's caricatured images on social media.

Following the arrest, an outrage broke out on social media with #ISupportPriyankaSharma being the number one hashtag trend on Twitter.

Image: Indian Express Screenshot

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