Mumbai: A person using social media can understand English because the language used on such platforms is English, held the Bombay High Court on Wednesday.
This comes while the HC upheld the detention orders of a Thane resident, whose activities were termed to be ‘dangerous and prejudicial’ for public order.
A bench of Justices Sambhaji Shinde and Virendrasingh Bisht upheld the detention of Siddhesh Mhaskar aka Siddhu Abhange, who has three criminal cases, registered against him.
Presently lodged in Nashik central prison, Siddhesh was picked up by the authorities in October 2019 and immediately detained. Before this, the Thane police was continuously searching the whereabouts of Siddhesh, however, he was allegedly absconding.
While challenging his detention through advocate Udaynath Tripathi, one of the grounds, Siddhesh relied upon to question the detention orders, was that the Thane police did not provide Marathi translated copies of certain documents, which were originally in the English language. He claimed that being a Maharashtrian, he only understood the Marathi language.
According to Thane police, Siddhesh has been named in a case wherein he is accused of impersonation and forgery. The police also highlighted the statements of witnesses, who claimed that he was ‘social media terror.’
Having heard the contentions, the bench noted that Siddhesh was quite active on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc.
“As far as ground about non-supply of an English translation of some documents is concerned, these are the letters which were written by some complainant to the cyber cell.
Apart from this, it is revealed from the record that the detenue (Siddhesh) knows the English language as he used social media such as Facebook, YouTube, Tik-Tok, Instagram etc.” the bench held.