Ranchi, July 16, 2019: A court in Ranchi on July 15 ordered a 19-year-old woman to distribute five copies of the Quran for sharing a controversial post on Facebook.
Richa Patel, a resident of Pitharia, a Ranchi suburb, was arrested on July 12, following a complaint by a local Islamic organization.
The court of Judicial Magistrate (First Class) Manish Kumar Singh granted Patel bail on the condition that she would distribute the Quran to the complainant and different libraries in the city, the capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
She has to do this within 15 days of her release and submits the receipts in court.
The court wants Patel to submit one copy of the holy book to the local Anjuman Committee in the presence of police authorities, her lawyer Rampravesh Singh told the Press Trust of India.
Reacting to the condition set by the court, Patel said the direction to distribute the holy books was not right.
“To write about our own gods is not wrong. It not like that I had intentionally hurt their religious sentiments. I had not written that post; I had only copied and pasted the text,” she said.
“Such posts also come from the other side, but they are not told to recite Hanuman Chalisa and go to temples,” she added.
Her arrest has caused resentment among the Hindu groups in Ranchi, and some organizations even took out protest marches.
Members of Patel’s family are planning to appeal to a higher court against the verdict.