Mobile phone, laptop sent to Gujarat to implant dangerous material: Aisha

Filmmaker says seized electronic devices not submitted in court for a month

Filmmaker Aisha Sultana, against whom a sedition case has been registered, has said that her mobile phone and her brother’s laptop were seized by the Kavaratti police and had been kept somewhere for nearly a month without producing them before courts. They were later sent to a forensic lab in Gujarat via a special messenger “to do something against” her. In a reply affidavit filed in the Kerala High Court, she said normally all forensic analysis of objects seized from Lakshadweep was done at the labs in Hyderabad, Chennai or Kerala. However, in her case, the prosecution deliberately circumvented the chain of custody of both electronic devices seized, which had “provided an opportunity for them to install any material according to their whims and fancies which is prejudicial to the interest of the petitioner/accused.” The reply affidavit was filed in response to an affidavit filed by the Lakshadweep administration in her case seeking to quash the sedition case.