Two complaints were filed against him with the Haryana police; one by the Sarpanch of Jatheri, a village in Haryana, and another by Renu Bhatia, chairperson of the Haryana State Commission for Women (HCW).

Besides an academic commentary on India’s military response against Pakistan and what it means for India-Pakistan relations, Khan had remarked on the ‘optics’ of the press briefings by the defence forces by placing a Muslim woman officer, Colonel Sophiya Qureshi as the face of India’s military operation.

“The optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings is importantly but optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it’s just hypocrisy… the grassroots reality that common Muslims face is different from what the government tried to show but at the same time the press conference shows that an India, united it its diversity, is not completely dead as an idea,” he wrote on Facebook on May 8, a day after India launched Operation Sindoor.

Complaints

According to a copy of one of the FIRs (first information report)  reviewed by Alt News, Khan has been arrested under sections 196(1)(b), 197(1)(c), 152 and 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). One of the lawyers working on the case confirmed the charges to Alt News.

This FIR was filed by a Yogesh, the village chief of Jatheri in the Sonepat district of Haryana. In his complaint, he said that at a time when Indians needed to stand united against a foreign power (Pakistan), Khan was trying to incite people against the country and hurting religious sentiments by saying that Colonel Sufiya Qureshi’s presence at the press briefings on Operation Sindoor were a mere show by the government, which otherwise works againt the prevention of crimes against Muslims.

Yogesh also claimed that Khan blamed ‘mad’ armymen for escalating tensions and conflicts between India and Pakistan. While he claimed that these comments were made in person by Ali Khan in front of a few others, he also mentioned Khan’s X and Facebook posts from May 8 in the FIR.

This FIR has been registered under the Rai Police Station, Sonepat, Haryana. The complaint was filed at 8:15 pm on May 17; Khan was arrested the following morning.

Alt News was unable to access the FIR filed by Renu Bhatia for specific details. However, Narender Kadian, deputy commissioner of police (crime), Haryana, told the press on May 18 that Bhatia’s FIR was against Khan’s posts on Facebook as well as him skipping the summons issued by the women’s commission. He added that the FIR invokes sections 353, 79, 152 and 169(1) of the BNS against the professor.

The Haryana State Commission for Women had issued a notice to Khan on May 12 after taking suo motu cognisance of his social media posts (a reference to one of these was also made by Yogesh in his FIR). The HCW complaint against Khan, accessed by Alt News, expresses concern over his remarks because it disparages women in uniform, misrepresents facts (by using terms like “genocide” and “dehumanisation” in the posts) and vilifies military actions and the role of women officers against cross-border terrorism. It also said that Khan’s remarks had the potential to incite communal unrest and violated women’s dignity, outraged their modesty and breached the University Grants Commission’s ethical conduct regulations for faculty. Two posts by the professor, one from May 8 and another from May 11, were attached to the complaint. Khan was asked to appear before the Commission on May 14 along with a written explanation, in the form of an affidavit, of his statements and materials or documents to justify his remarks. He was also directed to carry a copy of Ashoka University’s code of conduct for faculty and a copy of his employment contract.

But what is it that Khan exactly said in his Facebook and X posts that called for such a strong reaction from the women’s commission and the village chief?

What Did Khan Say?

On May 8, a day after the Indian defence forces launched the military strikes targeting terror sites in Pakistan, the Ashoka University professor wrote a post on Facebook summarising the India-Pakistan conflict.

It begins with, “Strategically India has actually begun a new phase in terms of collapsing distinction between military and terrorist (non-state actors) in Pakistan” and goes on to say that Operation Sindoor has made it clear that  “response to terrorist attacks will be met with a military response and removes any semantic distinction between the two.”…

Further, Khan says that those “mindlessly advocating for a war” have never lived or visited a conflict zone. “War is brutal. The poor suffer disproportionately and the only people who benefit are politicians and defence companies.”

At the end, he made a point regarding the ‘optics’ of Operation Sindoor’s press briefings:

“I am very happy to see so many right wing commentators applauding Colonel Sophia Qureishi but perhaps they could also equally loudly demand that the victims of mob lynchings, arbitrary bulldozing and others who are victims of the BJP’s hate mongering be protected as Indian. citizens. The optics of two women soldiers presenting their findings is important but optics must translate to reality on the ground otherwise it’s just hypocrisy… For me the press conference was just a fleeting glimpse- an illusion and allusion perhaps to an India that defied the logic on which Pakistan was built. As I said, the grassroots reality that common Muslims face is different from what the government tried to show but at the same time the press conference shows that an India, united it its diversity, is not completely dead as an idea”

A very basic, literal reading of this post suggests that the role of women military officers was not even the main discourse or primary concern. It simply conflates the contradiction in celebrating a person of one community in a certain situation, while not speaking up when others from the same community face hate crimes.

It also adds that the press conference where a Muslim army officer was placed at the forefront offered a glimpse “that an India, united it its diversity, is not completely dead.”

How the comment outraged the dignity and modesty of women remains unclear.

The second post annexed by the HCW in its complaint was made by Khan on May 11. It was a comment on the abuse faced by foreign secretary Vikram Misri and his family after he announced the ceasefire. Here he criticises those clamouring for war.

“… So when you clamour for war or you call for a country to be wiped out then what exactly are you asking? For the genocide of an entire people? I know Israel is getting away with doing this – and some Indians admire this- but do we really want to advocate the wholesale murder of children as potential future enemies?

Think about what it means when you say ‘wipe them out, ‘finish them,’ ‘destroy them’ etc? You are saying kill all the children, the elderly, minorities, those who are opposed to war on the other side and many other innocent people who want to do exactly what you want to do: be a father, a mother, a daughter, a son, a grandparent and a friend. You can only ask for such wholesale destruction if you have completely dehumanised them… there are madmen everywhere, but those closer to the border know what war means: it means arbitrary, unpredictable and senseless death. Those far from the border seem to think war is some kind of video game. This dehumanisation is symptomatic of deep seated insecurities within us because we somehow need to deny someone else’s humanity to affirm our own but the reality is that the minute we dehumanise someone else- even though they might represent the opposite of everything we stand for- then we have given in to our basest instincts. We have sown the seeds of our own destruction.”

A very literal reading of this post also suggests that it is an appeal advocating for peace over war. The words genocide and dehumanisation in the context in which they have been used do not vilify India’s military strength or efforts but instead urge one to think of what we really ask for when we celebrate war over ceasefire.

His comment, “The kind of war mongering we are seeing amongst civilians is actually disrespecting the seriousness of war and dishonouring the lives of soldiers whose lives are actually on the line,” clearly indicates that it is humanity that is being advocated for, because lives of soldiers and those who live on war-torn areas are often forgotten when emotions run high. At a very surface level, calling this seditious or affecting the nation’s sovereignty would be farfetched.

Misplaced Outrage?

In a press briefing, HCW’s Renu Bhatia criticised Ali Khan Mahmudabad and said that she was surprised he even became a professor. “Why did he become a professor if he can’t respect our daughters? What will he teach our daughters as a professor?” she says, adding that he demoralised women, which is a “shameful thing” and has no right to remain a professor.

While making these remarks, she also says that he used the phrase “painted face,” which Alt News did not find anywhere in Khan’s posts that the Commission had attached in its complaint.

“How and why did he become a professor if he can’t respect our daughters? What will he teach our daughters?” she said. “His posts show that he has a mentality of revolt against the nation.” She said that Mahmudabad was just living in India but had no love for the country. pic.twitter.com/RpFpK8UQU3

— Alishan Jafri (@alishan_jafri) May 15, 2025

It seems as though Khan’s words have not just been misinterpreted but perhaps misread because the charges in the HCW complaint and the FIRs do not add up even with the most conservative reading of Khan’s posts. How his posts are shameful, offensive to women officers of the armed forces or hurt women’s dignity has not been explained. The briefings by the two women seem to have been made to make a larger point about communal issues and the duality of many in the Right-wing.

How his words attack national sovereignty remains unclear as well because at no point are the actions of the government or defence forces critiqued. He actually lauds their stance, if anything. The political science professor very carefully only calls out “those who are baying for war” and “Right wing commentators” in the posts. Are these groups being conflated with the nation or attacking national sentiments? Then that’s a deeper problem.

In response to the HCW’s complaint and summons, Khan also issued a statement saying that his remarks have been completely misunderstood.

“From a bare reading of his original posts, it is clear that Prof. Khan praised the strategic restraint of the armed forces… and said that the optics of the women officers chosen for media debriefs was ‘important’ as proof that the secular vision of the founders of our Republic is still alive… It is preposterous that we have come to such a pass in India that even praising the army, albeit while criticizing those who clamour for war, can now invite such targeted harassment and attempted censorship,” a letter signed by over 1,200 people, including academics and his students, reads.

But Ashoka University has distanced itself from Khan’s remarks. “Comments made by a faculty member on his personal social media pages do not represent the opinion of the university. These statements have been made by him independently in his individual capacity… Ashoka University and all members of the Ashoka community are proud of India’s armed forces and support them unequivocally in their actions towards maintaining national security. We stand in solidarity with the nation and our forces,” it said. But the faculty association has stood by him, calling the charges “groundless and untenable”.

Khan is a historian and the head of the department at Ashoka, where he teaches political science. He has done his PhD and MPhil from the University of Cambridge and has an undergraduate degree in History and Political Science from Amherst College. He is also a member of the Samajwadi Party.

The charges against Ali Khan Mahmudabad are severe and can even attract imprisonment for life. The case against him is particularly disturbing because his writing and comments were fairly academic and calling them outraging women’s dignity seems like a stretch. On the other hand, the High Court had to intervene and ask Madhya Pradesh police to take cognisance of the remarks by BJP minister Kunwar Vijay Shah. Shah referred to Colonel Qureshi as a “sister of terrorists”. Meanwhile, the National Commission for Women has condemned his remarks, but has not summoned him.

Even the FIR filed by the police in Vijay Shah’s case became a point of controversy. The High Court slammed the Madhya Pradesh police for drafting the FIR “in such a way that it can be quashed“. The inflammatory remarks made by the minister were not even mentioned in the complaint. Justice Atul Sreedharan, part of the division bench looking into the case, explicitly said that the contents of the FIR were “vulnerable to being quashed” in the absence of a description of the speech. The HC said it would oversee the investigation thereon.

“It is shocking and unconscionable that the Indian state continues to make such targeted use of the colonial sedition law against an honest and principled academic, while protecting its own ministers who have made filthy remarks about serving officers of the Indian Army and having allowed its trolls to attack India’s Foreign Secretary and his daughter,” academic Supriya Chaudhuri wrote in support.

When one reflects on how the two cases—of Khan and Shah—have been handled so far, it leaves one wondering if their respective faiths have any role to play. The irony is this is precisely the point Khan tried to make in his Facebook posts, for which he is now in custody.

Understanding the charges

Section 79 punishes those intending to insult the modesty of any woman with imprisonment for that may extend to three years, and a fine.

Section 152 deals with endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India by exciting or attempting to excite, “secession or armed rebellion or subversive activities, or… feelings of separatist activities or endangers sovereignty or unity and integrity of India”. The punishment could entail imprisonment up to seven years along with a fine and, in worst-case scenarios, extend to a life term. This is similar to sedition.

Section 196 ensures punishment for those who promote enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc to disrupt harmony. Punishment for those charged under Section 196 (1)(b) is imprisonment extending up to three years, or a fine, or both.

Section 197 deals with imputations and assertions that prejudice national integration.

Punishment under 197(c)—which looks at published statements, assertions or pleas “concerning the obligation of any class of persons, by reason of their being members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community” that is likely to cause disharmony, feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will—entails imprisonment up to three years, or a fine, or both.

Section 299 punishes those who intend to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs by deliberate and malicious acts. Penalty is imprisonment for up to three years, or fine, or both.

Section 353 deals with statements that result in public mischief and can result in imprisonment up to three years.

With inputs from Indradeep Bhattacharya

Image credit: Facebook/ @AliMahmudabad

The post Optics of disproportionate action: Posts that led to Ashoka professor Ali Khan’s arrest far from anti-women, seditious appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Diti Pujara.

Photograph Source: DonkeyHotey – CC BY 2.0

“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”

—Ruby Freeman, Georgia election worker

“Hey, you stupid slave nigger…You are in our sights, we want to kill you. If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch.”

—Abigail Jo Shry, Texas Trump cultist’s threat to Judge Tanya Chutkan

“They must serve as examples for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

—Donald Trump on the Central Park Five

“Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”

—Richard Nixon,

Revenge porn is the GOP’s new black.

“I am your retribution,” Donald Trump, America’s bloated, bloviating Batman, declares.

“We’re going to start slitting throats on day one,” promises Ron DeSantis, glitchy governator of Florida, the state where history goes to die, and being comatose is touted as a virtue.

Meanwhile, in congressional hearings, the queen of laptop porn, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, parades explicit photos of a naked Hunter Biden and his redacted junk to score MAGA points against President Joe Biden. This conduct is relatively tame for the rabid Greene, who has labeled Pelosi a “traitor,” advocated for her assassination, and spread baseless innuendos when a homicidal home intruder fractured Paul Pelosi’s skull with a hammer.

It seems that Trump and his supporters will not be satisfied until MAGA cultists take down his political enemies and, ultimately, the country.

They are encouraged by Trump, who has always spoken, unfiltered, the language of vengeance and violence. In 1989, as a real estate mogul, he demanded the death penalty for the Central Park Five, the Exonerated Five since 2002, although Trump, who was found liable for sexual assault in the E. Jean Carroll case, refuses to acknowledge their innocence or to apologize. As a 2016 presidential candidate, he boasted of sexually assaulting women and condoned an attack on a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his campaign rallies. As president, he “joked” that police should rough up suspects they take into custody and once asked former Defense Secretary Mark Esper why White House demonstrators protesting the murder of George Floyd couldn’t just be shot.

Trump’s language, however inciteful, is protected by the First Amendment. His actions are not. And while Trump is many deplorable things – racist, psychopath, pathological liar, xenophobe, misogynist, and cis-supremacist – a fool is not one of them. He may notoriously boast that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” but, like the mafia dons he channels, he knows that rather than risk the consequences of committing such an act himself, it’s best to leave the dirty work to others. That is what minions and co-conspirators are for. After all, this is the bone-spurred no-show who promised his followers on January 6 that he would join them at the Capitol.

Despite his threats and intimidation, Defcon Don remains an imperiously impervious and untouchable pariah who, his 20-minute, whirlwind excursion to the Fulton County Jail aside, may never see the insides of an actual jail cell. The norms of the criminal justice system simply do not apply to him: mugshots are optional, perp walks are negotiated, arraignments are breezily expedited. Does anyone doubt that, unlike social media influencer Kai Cenat, if Trump had conjured up a flash mob in front of Trump Tower for a giveaway of mugshot¹ NFTs and a riot broke out, he and his followers would have been allowed to leisurely broker their arraignment dates, not arrested on the spot?

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, more than 400,000 Americans are currently being detained pretrial – but not the quadruplely indicted Trump. In Georgia, the “billionaire” braggart’s bond was set at a mere $200,000, $300,000 less than that of his former fixer Michael Cohen who was convicted of hush money payments to a porn star on Trump’s behalf. One would think that conspiring to subvert democracy is a more serious offense.

Trump has already orchestrated one insurrection and is determined to incite another. Yet he remains not only a free man but the GOP presidential frontrunner, converting his many indictments into political currency. Of the eight “law and order” Republican presidential hopefuls on the debate stage in Milwaukee, all but two declared they would support Trump for party nominee even if he were “convicted in a court of law.” These duplicitous defenders of the Constitution see nothing wrong with backing a man for president who has proven himself incapable of upholding and protecting it.

After much stalling, it appears that with Trump’s Georgia booking our system of justice is finally beginning to work. But we have gone through the motions before, including two impeachments and a civil case, only to see him evade accountability.

This matters little to his supporters who hold his First Amendment rights and their Second Amendment rights more important than the rule of law, despite the threat of inciting stochastic terrorism Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric poses to the nation.

Trump has made no secret about whom he deems to be his enemies. His words have already endangered the lives of Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, New York County D.A.Alvin Bragg, New York A.G. Letitia James, and Washington, D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan. Encouraged by their puppet master, Trump supporters wasted no time doxing the Fulton County grand jury. That most of his targets are black and women should surprise no one.

Fulton County Jail’s nominal “inmate” No. P01135809 has been repeatedly warned about his threats. Yet despite a few tentative toe-dips in the shallow pool of judicial equity, everything so far indicates that Trump is above the law, where he will remain so long as optics takes precedence over principle and the equal application of justice.

The optics of concern here is not that of a two-tiered justice system. Rather, it is that the sight of Trump’s conviction and imprisonment would send the wrong message to the world that America has become a Third World “shithole country.” Sadly, concern over such optics overrides any about the fate of our democracy should his crimes go unpunished.

Some seem to think that Trump’s disgrace and humiliation are punishment enough. The media point to the dilapidated, overcrowded conditions of the Fulton County Jail, which are good enough (or bad enough) for mundane criminals but apparently too “extreme” for the former president. Crocodile tears fully primed, the media mouths concern about the “nightmarish public health” conditions at the jail, fully aware that the odds of Trump spending a night – or any time – behind its bars are nil. And even if Trump were incarcerated, does anybody believe that he would be treated like any other inmate or come to share the same fate as LaShawn Thompson, whose body was found “dehydrated, malnourished, and infested inside and out with insects”? Or would maggot removal be added to the roster of duties of the Secret Service?

For some, the optics of Trump’s booking and scowling mugshot might inspire optimism that the system is finally beginning to work. But we have gone through the motions before with Trump, only to witness the gravity-defying farce of trickle-up justice. Of course, it has yet to be proven in a court of law that Trump conspired to steal the election, but the question remains: What consequences will he face if and when it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he has? Moreover, what happens if Trump is convicted of his felonies in New York and Georgia but wins the Republican primary and the general election? Will he be imprisoned? Will the big house become the new White House?

The threat remains that if Trump is not convicted, he will run for president in perpetuity if only to stay out of prison. As early as August 2020, years before his serial indictments, Trump telegraphed his intent to cling to the presidency “4eva.” The means to thwart his authoritarian ambitions exist, but their use will require a measure of political will that those currently in a position to act lack.

Some comfort may be taken in the fact that legal scholars have revisited the theory that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the so-called disqualification clause, which bars elected officials who have violated their oath to uphold the Constitution and engaged in insurrection against the United States from running for and holding political office, could be invoked to derail a Trump dictatorship that would see him and his allies enact political retribution against individuals and institutions responsible for his present predicament.

Realpolitik, however, reveals that its successful use is far from guaranteed. Except for New Mexico County Commissioner Couy Griffin, attempts in 2022 to invoke the clause to remove insurrectionist Republican officials from office have uniformly failed. In Georgia, the non-profit group Free Speech for the People invoked the clause in a suit to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene’s name from the ballot there. Similar campaigns were launched against North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar. None succeeded. And while Republican New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan is reportedly listening to those advocating use of the clause to block Trump’s name from appearing on ballots in his state’s presidential primary, and Florida lawyer Lawrence Caplan has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, it is unlikely that other Republican secretaries of state will cooperate in these efforts and far more likely that they will move to stymie them.

Still, a bevy of legal scholars and jurists, including Lawrence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig and William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, have argued that the disqualification clause is “self-executing,” claiming violators are automatically disqualified from running for and holding political office and that disqualification does not require a criminal conviction. As Luttig explained on CNN,

All officials, federal and state, who have a responsibility to put on the ballot candidates for the presidency of the United States…are obligated under the Constitution to determine whether Donald Trump qualifies to be put on the ballot. That is, they must determine themselves whether he is disqualified from being listed on the ballot by Section 3. Now, here’s how this will work: Any secretary of state or other state election official who’s charged with that responsibility will make the determination. Now, whether that person decides that former President Trump is qualified or whether he or she determines that he is disqualified by Section 3 and therefore doesn’t list him, that decision will be immediately challenged in federal court, and it will quickly move to the Supreme Court of the United States, where this decision will have to be made prior to the 2024 election.

Nonetheless, some serious doubts temper any optimism. Congress, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, can remove the disqualification, something it has done twice: In 1872, in the name of national reconciliation, it enacted the Amnesty Act, which lifted restrictions barring former Confederates from voting and holding office, and in 1898, it voted to end Section 3. The only other time Congress invoked the clause was in 1919 when it refused to seat socialist Victor Berger for his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I, a decision that was later overturned (Berger eventually served three terms). On the other hand, in the 1970s, Congress passed joint resolutions to grant Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis posthumous Section 3 amnesty. Here, too, the aim was national reconciliation in the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War. According to New York City Bar, there is currently no congressional legislation to enforce Section 3.

Given its rightwing majority, placing one’s faith in the Supreme Court seems criminally naïve. Aside from the fact the initial intent of the clause has repeatedly been nullified by a desire for “national unity,” and with rumors of impending civil war now indelibly a part of the zeitgeist, it seems unlikely that Congress or SCOTUS will rise to the challenge.

Note

1. The Fulton County mugshots have proven anticlimactic, as they are little more than mostly dour DMV portraits. I had envisioned front view and side view shots, height backdrops, and handheld slates with names and inmate numbers on them. But I guess what’s good for Young Thug is good for Old Thug and his gang of eighteen.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John G. Russell.