New Delhi: A day before law student Sharmishta Panoli walked out of the Alipore Women’s Correctional Home, her father had said she “has learnt her lesson and will come out wiser”.
Panoli who was arrested on 31 May from Gurugram by Kolkata Police was released from jail Friday, a day after the Calcutta High Court granted her bail.
Kolkata Police arrested the 22-year-old influencer, Sharmishta, based on a 15 May FIR against her at the Garden Reach Police Station over a social media video.
Speaking to ThePrint over a call Thursday evening, only hours after her bail was granted, the father said, “We tried to remain very low key on this and stayed away from politics, but after what happened in Gurgaon (Sharmishta’s arrest), we think there is definitely a political undertone to this.”
Sharmishta stands accused of hurting religious sentiments, promoting enmity on the grounds of religion, and intentional insults while talking about Operation Sindoor in a video she posted on her Instagram page.
Following massive outrage over her post, she issued an unconditional apology on social media on 15 May.
Attempting to explain what was at the root of the video posted and subsequently taken down by the young law student, her father pointed to the charged environment created by celebrity politicians on social media.
“Look at Kangana Ranaut, what does she say? Some Gen Z kids will talk like Kangana Ranaut. They need to draw a line somewhere—on what may be acceptable and what may not be,” Prithviraj Panoli said. “Sharmishta has learnt her lesson and will come out wiser.”
Before Sharmishta’s arrest, the Kolkata Police said her family, along with her, was “absconding”. The police claimed they sought an arrest warrant for Sharmishta from court after failing to locate her to serve her notices.
Prithviraj Panoli, however, refuted the police claims.
‘Visited Lalbazar multiple times pre-arrest’
“She made the post on 7-8 May and deleted it soon after. However, some people downloaded it and continued sharing it. She received a lot of threats online. People she did not know started calling her. They issued threats to me, as well. So, on 14 May, I asked her to come to Kolkata from Pune, where she is studying,” he said.
“On 15 May morning, she reached Kolkata at 8.30 am. How can the police claim that she was missing from Kolkata then? How do they know where she was or not?”
From 15-19 May, the Panoli family, multiple times, visited Lalbazar, the Kolkata Police headquarters, and the Anandapur police station, Prithviraj Panoli said. The family—he added—was attempting to lodge a complaint over threats Sharmishta was receiving.
However, the police, according to him, did not inform them of any FIR against Sharmishta. “We submitted printed copies of all the threats against us. So, there is documented evidence that we had been approaching the police,” said Panoli.
The Panoli family is from Bangalore and currently lives in Kolkata.
On the sequence of events before the arrest, Prithviraj Panoli told ThePrint, “On 18 May, I was constantly in touch with the cops at both police stations, sharing all information, along with online threats we got. We approached a different police officer in the evening of 18 May, informing him that we feared for our safety and security.”
Giving an instance of the chain of troubles the family has been facing since the video post, Sharmishta’s father said, “On my way back home, I saw seven to 10 people standing inside my society, looking at our tower.”
According to the father, Sharmishta left Kolkata for Gurugram for a scheduled internship, starting 22 May, travelling, over the next few days, to her office in Delhi from her hotel inGurugram.
Soon after the scare in the society, Prithviraj Panoli, along with other family members, also booked flight tickets to Gurguram.
“Till 25 May, I was in touch with the Lalbazar police,” Prithviraj Panoli said. “I, at the same time, had asked her (Sharmishta) not to look at anything. We all had switched off our phones, but I was in touch with the police over WhatsApp. How can they say we were absconding?”
“We even asked the police if any FIR had been registered. By then, I had received threats via mail. If the police wanted to get in touch with us, they had our email IDs,” Prithviraj Panoli added.
In the early morning of 31 May, the Kolkata Police arrested Sharmishta from her hotel in Gurugram. “We could not do anything as there was a warrant,” said the father.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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