New Delhi:The Delhi High Court Tuesday granted transit anticipatory bail till March 20 to a lawyer to approach a Chennai court in an FIR lodged by the Tamil Nadu Police for allegedly giving false information claiming attacks on migrant workers in the state. The high court granted the relief to Prashant Kumar Umrao, a lawyer, whose verified Twitter handle says he is a spokesperson for Uttar Pradesh BJP, for 13 days and asked him to furnish his permanent address and mobile number to the counsel for State of Tamil Nadu and share his live Google pin location.
I am of the view that the applicant should be granted reasonable time to approach the concerned territorial court. The application is allowed. He is granted transit anticipatory bail till March 20 to approach the competent territorial court, Justice Jasmeet Singh said. The FIR has been lodged against Umrao under various sections of the IPC, including those for provocation with intent to cause riot, promoting enmity and hatred, provoking breach of peace and statement leading to public mischief, police said. Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi Central Police Station has filed the FIR.
Advocates Kushal Kumar and Harsh Ahuja, representing Umrao, submitted before the court that he has an apprehension of being arrested in the case and requires reasonable time to approach the territorial jurisdictional court seeking bail. Initially, the petitioner's counsel sought the relief for 12 weeks. However, the court said it cannot give it for so long and it can only grant the anticipatory bail for the time to enable him to go to Chennai and approach the court concerned.
At least give me six to eight weeks. I am being witch hunted. I am a young lawyer with a practice of only six years, Kumar submitted on behalf of Umrao. The counsel claimed that on Monday police authorities called up his clerk to some place on some pretext and forced him to disclose the whereabouts of Umrao.
Senior advocates Sanjay Hedge and Joseph Aristotle, appearing for the State of Tamil Nadu, said Umrao has been allegedly tweeting false information and later deleting it. The counsel argued that the allegations against the petitioner are grave and there can be nothing more anti-national than this as he was trying to "break" India.
They further said there are direct flights to Trivandrum and one stop over flights to Thoothukudi, hence he should have directly approached the territorial jurisdictional court instead of moving the plea before the Delhi High Court. Umrao, in his petition filed also through advocates Vishal Rai and Addtya Kapoor, claimed the FIR has been wrongly registered against him in the aftermath of certain tweets which he posted on Twitter based on news covered by national news agencies.