Ali, 42, was arrested under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) that deal with desition and insulting religious beliefs, family sources said. One of the charges against him is Section 152 of the BNS, which replaced the sedition law in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and criminalises acts that endanger the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India. The section prohibits inciting or attempting to incite secession, armed rebellion, or subversive activities, or encouraging separatist feelings.
Who Is Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad ? Arrested Over Operation Sindoor Remarks
Why In News
- Ali, 42, was arrested under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) that deal with desition and insulting religious beliefs, family sources said. One of the charges against him is Section 152 of the BNS, which replaced the sedition law in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and criminalises acts that endanger the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India. The section prohibits inciting or attempting to incite secession, armed rebellion, or subversive activities, or encouraging separatist feelings.
Who Is Ali Khan Mahmudabad
- “Ali Khan Mahmudabad, associate professor at private university in Haryana, arrested for his remarks on Operation Sindoor,” a police official told news agency PTI. No more details were available about the arrest.
- Ali Khan Mahmudabad a historian, political scientist, writer, poet and a faculty at Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana.
- Born in Lucknow on December, 2, 1982, Ali is the son of Mohammad Amir Mohammad Khan, popularly known as Raja Sahab Mahmudabad, who spent about forty in a legal battle to reclaim his ancestral property seized by the government under the Enemy Properties Act. Raja Saheb passed away in October 2023.
- Ali’s father was the only son of Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan, the last ruling Raja of Mahmudabad and long-time treasurer and major financier of the Muslim League before partition of India. Ali’s mother, Rani Vijay is the daughter of Padma Bhushan Jagat Singh Mehta, who served as India’s Foreign Secretary from 1976-79, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the External Affairs Minister.
What did Ali Khan say?
- Ali has been arrested days after Haryana women’s commission summoned him for his alleged remarks on Facebook that the Commission said “disparaged women officers in the Indian Armed Forces and promoted communal disharmony”.
- Commisison took suo motu cognisance of his social media posts following Operation Sindoor on May 7.
- In a Facebook post on May 8, Mahmudabad had said: “I am very happy to see so many right wing commentators applauding Colonel Sophia Qureishi but perhaps they could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the BJP’s hate mongering be protected as Indian citizens.
- “The optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings is importantly but optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it’s just hypocrisy.”
- The post referred to Qureishi, a Muslim officer in the Indian army, and attacks against Muslims, including lynchings and destruction of their houses without due process.
- In one of the two social media posts on May 8, Ali had highlighted the ‘irony’ of ‘right wing’ commentators praising Colonel Sofia Qureshi, who had represented the Army during media briefings about Indian military operations against terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
- In the post, Ali had called out the ‘blind bloodlust for war’ and raised concerns over the human cost of armed conflict while stressing that the “optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings” after India’s military action was important but “optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it’s just hypocrisy.”
