Filmmaker in India’s Lakshadweep charged over ‘bioweapon’ remark

Aisha Sultana charged for comment about Muslim-majority islands’ administrator amid controversial redevelopment plans.

Police in India’s Lakshadweep islands have charged a local filmmaker with sedition after she called the federal territory’s administrator a “bioweapon” being used by the government against the islands’ residents. The case against Aisha Sultana was registered at a police station in Lakshadweep’s main island and capital, Kavaratti, following a complaint by a local politician belonging to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian media reports said on Friday. The BJP complaint cited a Malayalam TV channel show on controversial government plans in Lakshadweep, during which Sultana reportedly said Modi’s government was using the islands’ administrator, Praful Khoda Patel, as a “bioweapon”.