Amulya Leona Noronha, aged 19, shouted on stage on Thursday: “Pakistan zindabad, Pakistan zindabad, Pakistan zindabad.”

Three times.

As a group on the stage and police surround her and drag her away, she keeps shouting: “Hindustan zindabad, Hindustan zindabad, Hindustan zindabad, Hindustan zindabad.”

Four times.

Then she manages to say: “The difference between Pakistan Zindabad and Hindustan Zindabad....”

The rest of the sentence is not audible as she is dragged away from the venue of a public meeting attended by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president Asaduddin Owaisi.

Charged with sedition, Amulya has been sent to judicial custody for 14 days.

Amulya is a journalism student who is a popular speaker at anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests. She had drawn considerable attention on social media when she and two other women had peppered the editor of a controversial portal with questions at Mangalore airport on January 31. They had borrowed a leaf from what comedian Kunal Kamra had done to TV anchor Arnab Goswami on board a plane.

The so-called sedition law or Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial relic that many jurists had said has no place in a democracy, says: “Whoever, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise, brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the Government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, to which fine may be added, or with imprisonment which may extend to three years, to which fine may be added, or with fine.”

Besides IPC 124A (sedition), Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups of people), 153B (assertions prejudicial to national integration) and 505 (2) (statements promoting enmity or hatred between groups of people) have been slapped on Amulya.

On February 16, Amulya had tweeted in Kannada: “Hindustan Zindabad, Pakistan Zindabad, Bangladesh Zindabad, Sri Lanka Zindabad, Nepal Zindabad, China Zindabad, America Zindabad.” She continued: “Be it any country, Zindabad to all.”

She was trying to make the point that all countries should live long. It is not much different from the Maha Upanishad concept of “vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the world is one family)”, a phrase that plays on the lips of Indian Prime Ministers, including Narendra Modi, when they make speeches at the UN.