Mohammad Zubair, co-founder of self-proclaimed ‘fact-checking’ website ‘AltNews’, who was earlier booked under the stringent Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for targetting a minor girl, peddled fake news that a woman detained under the new anti-conversion law in Uttar Pradesh suffered miscarriage.
Zubair had shared a report of The Telegraph headlined “First woman detained under India’s controversial Love Jihad laws forced into miscarriage.” He had shared a snippet of from the report that read “A distraught Muskan Jahan called her mother-in-law, from a govt shelter where she is being held in the city of Moradabad in UP, saying she had bled profusely and then lost her baby”.
The incident is about a woman Bala Devi hailing from Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district who had complained to the police that a man named Rashid had enticed her daughter Pinky (22) to go with him to a maulvi with a motive of converting her to Islam. The police had filed an FIR against Rashid and his brother Saleem under Section (3) and 5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, according to a report by Swarajya.
Rashid and Saleem were later arrested by the police and were remanded in judicial custody for 14 days. Pinky was shifted to a government woman shelter home.
However, The Telegraph report by one Joe Wallen, based on the inputs of an Indian reporter named Mohammed Sartaj Alam said that Pinky got married to the Muslim man and changed her name to Muskan Jahan after converting to Islam. The claim about miscarried was based on the unverified statements given by Rashid’s mother.
“Mrs Jahan believes her three-month-pregnant daughter-in-law was given an injection to abort the baby by staff because she converted from Hinduism to Islam and married a Muslim man,” The Telepgraph report says.
The Moradabad district administration had called reports of miscarriage as fake news. A report by The Hindu quoting district probation officer Rajesh Chandra Gupta noted that Pinky was in full normal health and that her pregnancy was intact.
After getting called out for the fake news peddled, Mohammad Zubair put out a tweet clarifying it as an ‘update’.
Update : U.P. officials deny woman suffered miscarriage.
“On December 13 at 11:05 a.m., she was discharged from hospital. [She is] in full normal health. Her pregnancy is intact,” Mr. Gupta said. All reports of the woman having a miscarriage “are fake”.https://t.co/69xuimst0r— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) December 14, 2020
Apart report was widely shared by a section of the Indian media and opposition leaders too.
The first woman detained under UP's 'Love Jihad' laws had a miscarriage in police custody.
Her family has alleged that she was given an injection against her will to abort the baby.
Our Modia ignored it. UK Media had to report it.
THIS ISN'T FASCISM?https://t.co/aAi0ESrj2H
— Srivatsa (@srivatsayb) December 13, 2020