The Allahabad High Court has granted bail to a man who was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police last year for allegedly putting up a post on Instagram with the phrase “I Love Muhammad”.
Justice Rajiv Lochan Shukla observed on Monday while granting bail to the accused, Nadeem, that the “applicant does not have any criminal antecedents” and the post “does not name any particular caste or community”.
The accused, who was jailed on October 7 last year, had moved the court seeking bail in connection with an FIR registered at a police station in Muzaffarnagar. His counsel argued that he was falsely implicated in the case and the trial was unlikely to conclude in the near future.
Opposing the bail plea, the government counsel claimed that the applicant made “insensitive comments” in the post and such statements led to riots in Bareilly. Anti-social elements were incited by such slogans, the counsel said.
Bareilly witnessed clashes on September 26, 2025 between the police and people protesting the police action against those who carried “I Love Muhammad” posters during an Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi procession in Kanpur on September 4 that year.
