Disha Ravi, a 22 year old activist from Bengaluru, is making headlines for her tweet over farmers’ protest against three farm laws.
Starting from her arrest on the 13th of February, Disha Ravi gained a lot of criticism and support from netizens, politicians, authors, activists and writers.
However, she is currently facing anti government charges for sharing Sweden climate chnage activist Greta Thunberg’s “toolkit” on Twitter.
Even after deleting the tweet, the Delhi Police arrested Disha Ravi.
Defending the arrest, the Delhi Police said, Disha feared UAPA charges and asked Greta Thunberg to delete the post, but tweeted a modified version of the toolkit. The modified version was allegedly edited by Disha Ravi.
On the 15th of February, the Police said, Disha wrote to Thunberg on WhatsApp, saying, “Okay can you not tweet the toolkit at all. Can we just not say anything at all for a while. I am gonna talk to lawyers. I am sorry but our names are on it and we can literally get UAPA against us.”
Disha allegedly made the request fearing registration of case under the stringent the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), police claimed.
Thunberg, a teen climate activist, had shared the “toolkit” to lend her support to the farmers’ agitation against the three farm laws.
In the document, various urgent actions, including creating a “Twitter storm” and protesting outside Indian embassies, were listed which were needed to be taken to support the farmers’ protest.
A senior police officer said that while examining the WhatsApp chats between Thunberg and Disha Ravi, it came to notice that Disha had requested Greta Thunberg to delete the tweet as the “toolkit” had her name in the document.
While responding to queries relating to toolkit document during a press conference at the Delhi Police headquarters, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber Cell) Anyesh Roy said that it is not a static document.
“It’s a dynamic document which has a large number of hyperlinks, which are links to various Google drives, Google docs and websites. One of the important website present here is askindiawhy.com. This website has lot of Pro-Khalistani content. So this document in itself has an action plan,” Roy said.
The DCP said that in first instance, the document was not to be shared in the public and was private, but it was accidentally shared
“So this was a document to be shared to a limited number of people, who would then influence public opinion. Having global icons to follow this, this toolkit was made to propagate pro-Khalistan propaganda” he also said
Earlier in the day, police said that Disha Ravi along with Mumbai lawyer Nikita Jacob and Pune engineer Shantanu created the “toolkit” related to the farmers’ agitation and shared it with others to tarnish India’s image, the Delhi Police said on Monday.
The police claimed that Disha, who was arrested on Saturday from Bengaluru, sent the “toolkit” to teen climate activist Thunberg through the Telegram app, and also “coaxed her to act on it”.
The data was also deleted, police said, adding that Disha’s Telegram account shows many links related to the “toolkit” were removed.
The matter is being heard in the Delhi High Court on the 16th of February.
Stay tuned for further updates.
