The family of IIT alumnus Vikram Buddhi, who has been awarded a jail term in the U.S. for posting hate messages against former President George. W. Bush, on Saturday said he would appeal against the sentence and alleged that the trial went on without a valid charge.
“He is going to appeal and the essential point is the arbitrary ways in which the whole prosecution started during the Bush regime and continued in (Barack) Obama’s time. The charge does not have even a whisper of internet messages,” Buddhi’s father Subba Rao said.
Buddhi was on Saturday sentenced to four years and nine months in prison and an additional three years of supervised release by a U.S. court for posting hate messages in 2006 against Mr. Bush and calling for bombings of American infrastructure.
The 38-year-old PhD student of Purdue University was arrested in 2006 for allegedly making threats to Mr. Bush, the then Vice President Dick Cheney and their wives.
Buddhi’s father alleged that the court was “acting arbitrarily“.
“The whole thing is fishy but I do not know what is really happening,” Mr. Rao said.
