Vikram Buddhi a permanent resident of New Bombay, and currently a masters student at Purdue University, Indiana, USA has been arrested and held without bail for making threats against the US Prez and others. This, allegedly done on a Yahoo Finance message board in December. There are two sides of any story. The first thing that comes to mind is the First Amendement, as prescribed to all citizens and residents of the USA. As a local newspaper reports
Purdue University graduate student Vikram Buddhi may have crossed a line if he posted online messages calling for the assassination of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other high ranking federal officials. National and local legal and political experts as well as local bloggers seem to agree that threats against the president’s life posted on the Internet are taking things too far.
The TOI spoke to his folks back here…
However, his NaviMumbaibased family firmly believes that Vikram is innocent and that someone has hacked into his net account to post the ‘Kill Bush’ message on the Yahoo finance board. Talking to TOI, 65-year-old Capt Subbarao said, “Vikram has been studying applied mathematics at the University of Purdue for the last ten years. He is a quiet and docile sort of person and I feel someone has played mischief by posting an anti-American message using his name.”
Personally, my first gut feeling reading this article is one of surprise. Dosent the US law enforcement agencies have nothing better to do than to read some loony comments on a message board and just go arresting the poster without checking the background. Come on people, give our local “chhokra” a break and get on with it. Let him out !!
