india

Updated: Jul 16, 2019 21:55 IST

A local court in Jharkhand’s Ranchi has granted bail to a college student arrested on charges of allegedly sharing objectionable contents against a community on social media last week but with a rider.

The court of judicial magistrate Manish Kumar Singh ordered Richa Bharti to donate five copies of the Quran to government-owned educational institutions. It also asked her to donate one copy of the Muslim religious book to complainant Mansur Khalifa, a member of Sadar Anjuman Committee.

“Directing her to donate the books within a fortnight in presence of police authorities and submit a compliance report, the court granted bail to Richa on the condition that she would furnish two sureties of Rs 7,000 each,” said Richa’s lawyer Ramparvesh Singh.

Khalifa had lodged a complaint with the Pithoria police station against Bharti on July 12 alleging that she was instrumental in uploading objectionable posts on Facebook and WhatsApp. The Facebook posts were directed against a particular religion that could have disturbed the communal harmony of the society, Khalifa alleged in the first information report, or FIR.

Bharti was arrested and sent to jail on July 12 after which some Hindu organisations staged protests on Sunday demanding her release.

In August 2017, a bench of Jharkhand High Court had imposed a unique condition of “community service through traffic management and helping patients at hospital” for granting bail to six people allegedly involved in communal violence in Ranchi.

The incident occurred at a Muslim-dominated Bargaiyn locality on June 3 in which a Hindu marriage procession was allegedly attacked by the members of the minority community leaving eight, including a five-year-old girl, injured. The incident was allegedly the fall out of an objectionable Facebook post shared by the groom’s cousin.

Granting them provisional bail, the court had asked the accused to do community service on October 3 and November 6 at the government-run Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) in Ranchi for managing the traffic or patients’ rush at OPDs for three hours.