The Supreme Court will take up on Tuesday a habeas corpus petition filed by the family of Bengal BJP youth leader Priyanka Sharma who was arrested for sharing on Facebook a morphed photograph of chief minister Mamata Banerjee.
The habeas corpus petition is filed before a high court or the Supreme Court seeking the production of a person whose whereabouts are not known.
After her arrest by Howrah police on May 9, Priyanka was remanded in judicial custody for 14 days.
A bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Sanjiv Khanna on Monday agreed to hear the habeas corpus plea urgently after senior advocate Neeraj Kishan Kaul urged the court to take up the case on a priority basis as it involved fundamental rights to life and liberty.
Kaul said the petitioner was forced to approach the Supreme Court directly since lawyers had been on strike across Bengal for several days and it was not possible for Priyanka to move Calcutta High Court for her bail and quashing of the criminal cases against her.
The lawyer further said since the family was aware of neither the actual criminal provisions under which Priyanka had been booked nor her whereabouts, they were forced to file the habeas corpus petition.
Accordingly to Kaul, 26-year-old Priyanka was being targeted by the state government because of political reasons. The lawyer said she had merely shared on her Facebook page a morphed image which had already gone viral on the social media. The morphed facial photo of the chief minister was superimposed on the picture of Bollywood actress Priyanaka Chopra.
