The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday filed charge sheets against six accused in the ongoing investigation of a case related to derogatory posts on social media against Judges and the judiciary, including some of the verdicts delivered by Judges of the High Court of Andhra Pradesh.
The accused, who are in judicial custody, were earlier arrested by the CBI on October 22 from various places of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
With this, the CBI has filed 11 separate charge sheets in the case, as five were earlier arrested and charge sheeted. Investigation against one more accused is in progress and efforts are on to gather evidences against him. His YouTube channel has also been blocked.
Moreover, warrants of arrest have been taken by CBI in the names of two of the accused who are abroad from the competent courts in India, and process for arresting them had been initiated through diplomatic channels. The CBI has gathered information about the two accused who are staying abroad by issuing Blue Corner Notice through the Interpol.
Sources said that one of them is Punch Prabhakar, who is said to be very active on social media.
The CBI initiated action after it registered the case to get objectionable posts removed from social media platforms, public domains and a lot of such posts/accounts were removed from the Internet.
During the course of investigation, 13 digital gadgets, including mobiles and tablets, had been recovered. The CBI collected call data records of 53 mobile connections, and 12 accused and 14 others were examined in the case. During examination, evidences from digital platforms had been collected using Digital Forensic Technique. The CBI moved through Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) channel for gathering the information related to the Facebook profiles of the accused, Twitter accounts, Facebook posts, tweets, YouTube videos from Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.
The CBI had registered the present case on November 11, 2020, against 16 accused and had taken over the investigation of 12 FIRs from the CID, Andhra Pradesh, in pursuance of the orders of A.P. High Court. The original FIRs were registered on the complaints from Registrar-General of the High Court.
It was alleged that the key personnel occupying posts of prominence in Andhra Pradesh, by intentionally targeting the Judiciary, made derogatory posts on social media platform against Judges and the judiciary following some court verdicts delivered by the Judges.
