The Bombay High Court has quashed an FIR against Pune engineering student Khadeejah Shahabuddin Shaikh over an Instagram repost linked to the India-Pakistan conflict, ruling that the material before the court did not establish the criminal intention or knowledge required for the offences invoked.
Justice Milind N. Jadhav said the possibility that a publication could cause displeasure or resentment was not, by itself, sufficient ground for criminal prosecution. The allegations also had to satisfy the specific requirements of the penal provisions under which the FIR was registered.
According to the court order, a police officer monitoring social media on May 7, 2025, noticed a post reposted by Shaikh. The prosecution alleged that the post had communal overtones, could create tension and might affect public peace. The order does not reproduce the post.
The court noted that Shaikh was not the original author of the content and had deleted the repost within two hours without being directed to do so by investigators. She had also publicly expressed remorse and apologised. These circumstances were considered alongside the absence of material demonstrating the necessary criminal intention or knowledge, the court said.
Justice Jadhav nevertheless described the post as contentious and said reposting content could attract criminal liability when the required elements of an offence were established. The court also observed that the repost had the potential to create apprehension of disturbance between religious communities. However, no communal disturbance or other unlawful activity attributable to the repost had been brought to its attention.
Shaikh’s lawyer, Farhana Shah, told the court that her client had only reposted material created by another person and that continuing the criminal proceedings would affect her career. She said Shaikh was arrested on May 9, 2025, the day the FIR was registered at Kondhwa Police Station in Pune City.
Additional Public Prosecutor Amit A. Palkar opposed the application, arguing that reposting made the content available to the public and that deleting it or issuing an apology did not automatically remove criminal liability. The court also noted that the roughly two-day gap between the repost and registration of the FIR did not, by itself, make the prosecution illegal.
The FIR invoked provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita relating to acts endangering India’s sovereignty, promoting enmity between groups and deliberately outraging religious feelings. The court recorded that Shaikh was pursuing an engineering degree in information technology, had no criminal antecedents and had spent time in custody.
The ruling leaves the legal threshold intact for prosecuting reposted social-media content: reposting can have consequences, but the prosecution must still demonstrate the specific statutory ingredients of the alleged offences. In Shaikh’s case, the Bombay High Court found that the material placed before it did not meet that threshold and quashed the FIR.
