Ranchi court puts Quran distribution as girl’s bail condition, later drops it 

Richa Bharti.

New Delhi: A local court in the Jharkhand capital, Ranchi, put an unusual condition for granting bail to a young woman who was arrested for posting an alleged hate message on Facebook. Richa Bharati, 19, on her post, had allegedly targeted the Muslim community.

The judicial magistrate (first class), Manish Kumar Singh, who was hearing Bharti’s bail application asked her to donate a copy of Quran to Anjuman Islamia Committee at Pithoria and four copies to the libraries of four other schools and colleges apart from a sum of ₹7,000 as bail bond. According to media reports, the judge has also directed the investigating officer to be present during Bharti’s donation of the Quran.

This ruling followed a massive outrage, especially among the Hindu community, and Bharti started receiving massive support on social media with the right-wingers rallying behind her. Many lawyers also offered her free service and urged her to fight the case. Many tagged ministers and called for the dismissal of the judge.

While reacting on the condition, Bharti, who is a commerce student, said she “hasn’t done anything wrong”.

Talking to a TV reporter, she said, “Al though I respect the court, I am not satisfied with the its decision. I will have to go to a mosque to distribute the Quran for a normal post. There is nothing wrong in writing about my God.”

She further said she didn’t write the post but copy-pasted it. She said, “I didn’t write the post. I got it from somewhere and just copied it and pasted (on Facebook). People from other communities post such things but they were never told to distribute Hanuman Chalisa. This is not fair.”

Court waives condition

Following the outrage, the court waived off the condition of donating the Quran but maintained the regular bail bond of ₹7,000.

The revised order said: “Having gone through the petition and heard submissions of Id. APP, the order was passed by this Court on 15/07/2019 allowing regular bail to the petitioner Richa Bharti, in view of the aforesaid submissions of Id. APP, this Court modifies its earlier order by dropping the additional condition of distribution of copies of Holy Kuran by the petitioner. [Sic]”

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