The Ghaziabad police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday (15 June) filed the first information report (FIR) against Twitter and six individuals, including journalists and Congress politicians, under various sections of the IPC after the shared a video on social media platform Twitter with the “deliberate and malicious intention to foment religious discord”, The Times Of India reported.
FIR registered against POCSO accused Muhammad Zubair of propaganda website alt news and others for attempting to make a case of assault over Aasmani Tabiz communal. pic.twitter.com/Hk8XHqRTf1
— Raj Shekhar Jha (@rajshekharTOI) June 15, 2021
A tampered video of an elderly Muslim man being assaulted was shared widely on social media saying that his beard was forcibly cut for not chanting ‘Vande Mataram’ and ‘Jai Shri Ram’.
However, this was found to be fake news as the Ghaziabad Police clarified that there was no communal angle to the incident.
Apparently, the old man identified as Abdul Samad Saifi was an occult practitioner and was assaulted by the men as the amulets he gave did not give positive results.
The police have arrested three men – Adil, Parvesh Gujjar and Kallu – regarding the incident. Three more men identified as Arif, Poli, Mushahid are reportedly absconding.
The Uttar Pradesh Government has initiated action against Twitter for its failure to label this tweet as manipulated media which led to the spread of misinformation about a crime in the state.
Mohammed Zubair, self-proclaimed ‘fact-checker’ and co-founder of Alt News announced that he had deleted the videos he had posted related to the matter.
I've deleted the videos that I had posted. The victim's version of him being forced to chant "Jai Shri Ram" at this point in time do not seem to add up based on my conversations with police authorities and other journalists reporting on this issue. https://t.co/cof5bjv3I4
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) June 15, 2021
But the damage had already been done as many other liberal journalists like Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Saba Naqvi and actor Swara Bhaskar promoted this fake news.
The Ghaziabad Police noted in their FIR,“There is no communal angle to the incident in Loni where a man was thrashed and his beard was chopped off. The following entities-The Wire, Rana Ayyub, Mohammad Zubair, Dr Shama Mohammed, Saba Naqvi, Maskoor Usmani, Salman Nizami-without checking the fact, started giving communal colour to the incident on Twitter and suddenly they started spreading messages to disrupt the peace and bring differences between the religious communities,”
Muhammed Zubair, now also faces charges in a POSCO case (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences), for posting pictures of a minor granddaughter of an elderly person on social media.
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