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Synopsis

The Supreme Court today refused to provide any interim relief to Youtuber Manish Kashyap who has been booked by the Tamil Nadu police for sharing fake videos of attack on Bihar based migrant labourers.

When the matter was mentioned today morning before a bench comprising CJI Chandrachud and Justice Pardiwala, the bench had agreed to take the same up at the end of the board.  

The counsel informed the bench, when the case was taken up, that National Security Act had also been invoked against Kashyap.

"NSA has been imposed on me. Please grant some interim relief", the bench was told.

At this juncture, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, appearing on behalf of the state of Tamil Nadu clarified before the bench that Kashyap was already in custody.

Hearing this the CJI said, "How can we grant interim relief if he is in custody..Come on Monday, we haven't read the papers..".

Kashyap also sought clubbing of the FIRs filed against him. Yesterday, a Madurai court had sent the YouTuber to judicial custody till April 19.

Notably, another bench of the top court today granted relief to another accused, namely Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Prashant Umrao, in an FIR over the same issue.

In Umrao's matter, the bench comprising Justice BR Gavai and Justice Pankaj Mithal issued notice and modified the condition imposed by the Madras High Court while granting him anticipatory bail which required him to appear before the police for 15 days.

Besides this, the top court also passed an ad interim order that the anticipatory bail granted by the High Court would be applicable to any other FIRs registered in the state of Tamil Nadu with respect to the same cause of action.

The Top Court had also asked Umrao to tender an apology, which his counsel, Senior Advocate Siddharth Luthra said, that he would tender.

Case Title: Manish Kashyap vs. Union of India and Ors