The case registered by the Ghaziabad Police on Tuesday against news website The Wire , three journalists and three Congress politicians for...
The case registered by the Ghaziabad Police on Tuesday against news website The Wire, three journalists and three Congress politicians for their tweets related to a video in which an elderly Muslim man is seen narrating how he had been assaulted by a group of men shows that the Uttar Pradesh Police is selectively targetting specific individuals and organisations.
Several news publications and hundreds of social media users had also shared the man’s account of the attack on social media.
In addition, some provisions of the penal code invoked in the case, which was also filed against social media platform Twitter, do not seem to hold water.
The case relates to a video depicting 72-year-old Abdul Samad Saifi saying that he had been abducted in an autorickshaw by several men and locked up in a secluded house. Here, he alleged he was assaulted and forced to chant “Jai Shri Ram”. Saifi also said the assailants cut his beard and made him watch videos of other Muslims being attacked.
Though the alleged assault took place on June 5, the video of the attack and of Saifi narrating the incident came to be circulated widely on social media on June 14. Several news organisations reported the incident based on the...
