india

Updated: Jul 01, 2019 15:15 IST

Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal government has been issued contempt notice by the Supreme Court on a petition by the BJP’s Priyanka Sharma who was arrested in May for a meme on the chief minister.

Priyanka Sharma was released nearly 24 hours after the Supreme Court ordered her released on May 14.

While ordering her release, the top court had observed that the arrest of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha’s Priyanka Sharma appeared to be “arbitrary”.

The judges initially told Priyanka Sharma that she would have to apologise if she wanted bail. But after her lawyer strongly contested the directive, the bench of justices Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna made it clear that Priyanka Sharma’s apology wasn’t a condition for her release on bail. But she would have to apologise once she is released on bail,

The BJP leader later told reporters that she had been forced to sign on an apology statement and she wouldn’t apologise to the chief minister for the meme.“There is anarchy all across Bengal and I am being jailed for sharing a meme,” said Priyanka Sharma after her release.

Priyanka Sharma was arrested on May 10 after she reportedly superimposed Banerjee’s face on Priyanka Chopra’s photograph from the Met Gala event in New York held on May 6. The 26-year-old was charged with penal provisions relating to defamation, uploading offensive content and distributing sexually explicit material.