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Updated: Aug 15, 2019 17:54 IST

Assam Police have booked a 28-year-old Gauhati University research scholar for allegedly promoting enmity between communities after a 2017 Facebook post, officials said on Wednesday.

“We have registered a case on Wednesday after taking suo moto cognizance of a very old Facebook post by Rehna Sultana,” said KK Chowdhury, DCP, Guwahati West.

A second police official directly involved in the investigations said the case has been registered under section 153 (A) of the IPC and Section 67 of the IT Act.

Section 153 (A) of the IPC deals with words or acts that promote enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony. Section 67 of IT Act deals with publishing a defamatory post about a person.

On June 18, 2017 when Pakistan beat India by 180 runs in the Champions Trophy Finals, Sultana wrote on Facebook in Assamese which roughly translates to “today to take part in Pakistan’s celebrations, we have eaten beef. What I eat is a matter of my taste. On reading the word beef please don’t make yourself the subject of a conspiracy.”

Beef or cow slaughter is not banned in Assam.

“She wrote about eating beef. It may have hurt sentiments of a community,” DCP Chowdhury said.

Sultana, who is finishing her doctorate at the Gauhati University in the department of Assamese language, said she had deleted the post within minutes of writing it and gave a clarification in a Facebook post the next day.

“There is a conspiracy against me that it is being said that I wrote it now. I had written it in 2017 and deleted it after seeing that my post was being misunderstood and people had started to attack me,” Sultana claimed.

In July, Sultana was among the 10 people, including poets, who were named in a FIR which quoted an objectionable poem titled ‘write down I am a Miyah’ and claimed that it was portraying the Assamese as xenophobic. She and others later secured bail.