Uttarakhand youth jailed for inflammatory FB pictures

, July 29: A youth was arrested in Udham Singh Nagar of

and sent to jail for posting inflammatory pictures on Facebook, police said on Tuesday.

An official told IANS the youth, Lalit Kholia, was arrested on Monday for posting and tagging people in a picture, which was directed at a particular community.

It was related to Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur communal clashes, triggered by a land dispute between Muslims and Sikhs Saturday, in which three people were killed and many injured.

Some Muslim youths in Khatima town of Uttarakhand stumbled upon the post, following which they lodged a formal complaint with police while seeking its immediate removal from Facebook.

In their preliminary probe, police found the picture was posted by Siddhartha Manya. This, however, turned to be a fake ID.

The IP address of Kholia was then traced and he was arrested.

He was sent by a court to jail for trying to incite communal passions, spread hatred and promote animosity in the society, a police official told IANS.

An alert was sounded in Uttarakhand after the Saharanpur violence as a large number of Sikhs live in the state, especially in the Terai region.

IANS