Disha Ravi moves Delhi HC to restrain police from leaking probe material

The petition also seeks to restrain the media from publishing the content or extract of any alleged private chats, including those on WhatsApp, between her and third parties.

New Delhi: Climate activist Disha Ravi, arrested for alleged involvement in sharing a toolkit backing the farmers’ protest, on Thursday moved the Delhi High Court seeking to restrain police from leaking to the media any probe material in relation to the FIR lodged against her.

Advocate Abhinav Sekhri, one of the lawyers representing Ravi, said he is waiting for the matter to be listed for hearing in the high court and then only he can comment about it.

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The petition also seeks to restrain the media from publishing the content or extract of any alleged private chats, including those on WhatsApp, between her and third parties.

The Delhi Police, probing the “toolkit Google doc” backing the farmers’ agitation shared by climate activist Greta Thunberg, had arrested Ravi while Mumbai lawyer Nikita Jacob and Pune engineer Shantanu Muluk have been granted pre-arrest bail by court. A Delhi court had on February 14 sent Ravi to five day police custody after the agency said her custodial interrogation was required to probe an alleged larger conspiracy against the government of India and to ascertain her alleged role relating to the Khalistan movement.

Ravi was arrested by a Cyber Cell team of the Delhi Police from Bengaluru on February 13 and was produced before a court here seeking her police custody for seven days.

While seeking her custody, the police had told the court that the activist had allegedly edited the toolkit and many other people were involved in the matter.

A toolkit is a document created to explain any issue. It also provides information on what one needs to do to address the issue. This might include information about petitions, details about protests and mass movements.

Earlier, the Delhi Police had asked Google and some social media giants to provide information about email id, URLs and certain social media accounts related to the creators of the toolkit shared by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and others on Twitter in connection with the farmers’ protest.

The Cyber Cell had lodged an FIR against “pro-Khalistan” creators of the toolkit for waging a “social, cultural and economic war against the government of India”.

The case against unnamed persons was registered on charges of criminal conspiracy, sedition and various other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The toolkit was aimed at spreading disaffection and ill-will against the government of India and creating disharmony among various social, religious and cultural groups, the police had claimed.