SP leader booked, plaints filed against senior journo, Swara

New Delhi/Ghaziabad: Delhi Police on Thursday received a complaint against actress Swara Bhaskar, Journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Manish Maheshwari of Twitter India, and one Mohammad Asif in connection with their tweets related to the incident where an elderly was thrashed and his beard was chopped in Ghaziabad.

The complainant in the case, an advocate, told the Tilak Marg police station that some people have uploaded a viral video clip on social media which showed an old man identified as Abdul Samad Saifi being beaten up and his beard forcefully chopped off. It was also contended that the miscreants were from Hindu religious groups and they made Saifi chant "Jai Shree Ram" and "Vande Matram" against his wishes - a version consistently maintained by the victim and his family.

"The users of social media platform Twitter namely Md. Asif Khan (having Twitter handle @imMAKO2), Arfa Khanum Sherwani (having Twitter handle @khanumarfa), on June 14 and Swara Bhaskar (having Twitter handle @ReallySwara) on June 15 through their Twitter handles got inspired from the incident and started propaganda to spread hate amongst the citizens," he wrote in his complaint.

This follows the Ghaziabad Police FIR against Twitter, Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub, Alt-New co-founder Mohammed Zubair and several others for allegedly tweeting information that the assault might have a communal angle to it - a proposition considered by the police until recently.

While initial reports and material indicated a communal angle, two of the arrested accused were also found to be Muslim, following which Zubair had retracted his tweets. Despite this, the police booked him.

While the victim and his family have maintained that Abdul was attacked because of his religion, the Ghaziabad Police have said that the attack was purportedly over an amulet that Abdul allegedly sold to the prime accused Pravesh Gurjar.

Abdul's family has, however, said that he does not sell amulets and neither had he done so ever.

The grounds on which the complainant in Delhi has sought an FIR against Bhasker and The Wire's senior journalist Arfa Khanum Sherwani along with others is the same as the grounds on which the Ghaziabad Police initially booked Zubair, Ayyub, Twitter, The Wire and others.

Naming Twitter, the complainant in Delhi said, "Moreover, Twitter Inc., Twitter Communication India Private Limited (TCIPL) and Mr Manish Maheshwari (Managing Director Twitter India) did not take any action to remove these false tweets knowing the fact that the incident did not have any kind of communal angle."

He further expressed his disappointment that the social media company had not tagged these posts as "manipulated" as it does according to its policy for several misleading or factually incorrect information.

Significantly, an almost identical complaint has been filed with the Ghaziabad Police against the same people by Loni's BJP MLA Nand Kishor Gurjar.

Meanwhile, the Ghaziabad Police on Wednesday night arrested two more accused - Intezaar and Bauna alias Saddam - in the assault case and is now searching for a local Samajwadi Party leader Ummed Pehalwan Idrisi, whom the police have charged with promoting enmity by circulating the video online.

While Facebook has not been accused in the FIR like Twitter, police mentioned that Facebook also did not make any efforts to fact-check Ummeed's and others' posts and let the misleading video circulate.

This follows another FIR against the SP leader in Bulandshahr on Thursday under sections of the Disaster Management Act, after he had made a visit to the victim's home, thereby allowing crowds to gather.

A senior police officer of the Loni border police station told Millennium Post that Ummeed was also booked in a case of cow slaughtering in 2017.