Kerala Court's Relief For Lakshadweep Filmmaker Aisha Sultana In Sedition Case

In a relief for Lakshadweep filmmaker Aisha Sultana in a sedition case filed against her, the Kerala High Court today granted her anticipatory bail. The court had earlier given a temporary relief for one week, in the form of an interim bail, reserving the final order. The young filmmaker was, earlier this month, named in a case of sedition and hate speech for her comments criticising Lakshadweep Administrator Praful Khoda Patel's Covid handling. While she wasn't arrested, the Kerala court had given the temporary relief "if the police decided to arrest her". The sedition case was filed after Ms Sultana, in a news debate on a regional channel, blamed Covid cases in the island on Praful Patel's decisions and remarked that the Centre had used "bio-weapon" against Lakshadweep. "Lakshadweep had zero cases of COVID-19. Now it is reporting a daily spike of 100 cases. What the Centre has deployed is a bioweapon. I can say this clearly that the central government has deployed bioweapon," she had said on a Malayalam TV debate earlier this week.