Richa Bharti Case: Jharkhand's Ranchi court modifies 'donate Quran' order

A Ranchi court on Wednesday modified its order asking a college girl, arrested for an offensive Facebook post, to donate copies of the Quran as a pre-condition for bail. The court changing its order allowed her regular bail by furnishing bail bond of Rs 7,000 and two sureties of like amount each. Judicial Magistrate Manish Kumar Singh modifying his Tuesday's order, said the court has granted a petition filed by the investigating officer cum-officer-in- charge of Pithoria police station praying for doing away with the condition of donating copies of the Quran because of the difficulties in its implementation.

The court retained its condition that one of the bailers should be a local resident of Ranchi district and another must be a relative of the of the petitioner. Lawyers of the Ranchi civil court Wednesday boycotted the court in protest against the order asking the girl to distribute copies of the holy book.

They ended the boycott at 4 p.m. following the modification in the judge's order. The direction had evoked a huge outcry on social media with the hashtag #RichaBharti trending on Twitter on Tuesday.

The 19-year-old girl was arrested on July 12 for allegedly sharing an offensive post in the social media which reportedly hurt religious sentiments. A complaint was filed by the Pithoria Anjuman committee for the post. Lawyer Rampravesh Singh told PTI that now that the court itself has modified its order, there may not be a boycott Thursday.