Young cricketer in jail for comments against Team India for losing Champions Trophy final

A Shahjanpur-based cricketer probably never thought that his heated exchange of words with his friends on a WhatsApp group will land him in jail. On the night of June 18, after Team India lost the Champions Trophy 2017 final to Pakistan a dejected Nayeem got involved in an argument with his friends and wrote that ‘the Indian team deliberately lost the match as it was already fixed. The Indian team had taken that money to lose this match.”

A day after the final, an FIR was filed against him and two of his friends at Chowk Kotwali police station under Section 66 A of the IT Act. Police filed a charge sheet on the matter and the case came up for hearing in the court of the chief judicial magistrate on October 31, when Nayeem was sent to the district jail.

The complaint against Nayeem was taken after a local cricketer, Rajkamal Vajpai, who is associated with BJP Yuva Morcha approached the police. Vajpai produced the screenshot of the conversation in front of Shahjahanpur police chief KB Singh, who later ordered an FIR in the matter.

Gets Bail

Interestingly, while Nayeem was initially booked under the IT Act, the police later added IPC sections 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) in the charge sheet.

When asked about additional charges Chowk Kotwali police station in-charge Ashok Pal said, “Based on the evidence we got during the course of the investigation, additional charges under IPC sections were slapped against the accused.”

On Thursday, after the cops submitted the charge sheet to the court the court granted him a bail as he has a clean record. Kumar, Nayeem’s lawyer, said, “The court has granted bail to my client as he has not harmed anyone and doesn’t have any criminal history.”