Ghaziabad: Following the brutal assault of an elderly Muslim man in the Loni area of Ghaziabad, the police have now registered an FIR against Twitter, Washington Post columnist Rana Ayyub, Alt-News co-founder Mohammed Zubair, The Wire and a few others, for allegedly spreading incorrect information about the case being communal in nature, early on.
According to FIR, the tweets shared by the named accused on Twitter were re-tweeted by thousands of people and the social media platform chose not to act against these posts.
The FIR has been registered against Congress leaders Salman Nizami, Shama Mohamed and Maskoor Usmani. Zubair, Rana Ayyub and Saba Naqvi have also been named in the FIR.
A senior police officer of Ghaziabad police informed that they have sent a legal notice to Twitter Communications India and said that as the investigation proceeds, Twitter officials may also be summoned.
Significantly, the incident caught wind after tweets from Zubair, following which one accused was arrested — Parvesh Gurjar. At this point, even the Ghaziabad Police had prima facie looked at the case from a communal point of view. It had said it was not yet ruling out the possibility that the attack was communal in nature.
The following day, two more arrests were made — both Muslim men — after which Ghaziabad Police put out a statement. Following this, Zubair said that he had verified the allegations of the victim of the attack being communal and found that they do not add up and hence he was deleting the posts. The FIR against him was made public a few hours later.
After the attack, in which men can be seen forcibly cutting the victim — Abdul Saifi's — beard, the 72-year-old man had claimed he was attacked because of his religion. He had said that a few men had stopped him to offer a ride in an autorickshaw after which he was abducted, beaten up and kicked in a nearby forested area.
Now, the police have claimed that the attack against Abdul was over the sale of an amulet of some sort — implying that he might have known some of his attackers.
However, in yet another twist in the case, Abdul's family on Wednesday alleged that the police's claims of Abdul being attacked over an amulet sale were rubbish and insisted that the FIR in the case was not on the basis of the complaint given by them.
"We had filed a complaint on June 6 where we mentioned that my father was badly thrashed and the goons forced him to chant "Jai Shri Ram", however, police didn't mention the correct facts in the FIR. Also, the police have said that my father used to sell amulets, which is wrong as we do timber and ironworks and no one in our family sells amulets," said Tayyab Saifi, Abdul Samad's son.
Meanwhile, the family of the main accused in the case, Pravesh Gurjar, have accused Abdul of performing "black magic" on an amulet he had purportedly sold to him. The family claimed the amulet was the reason Gurjar's wife had a miscarriage and the reason his Loni home caught fire.
Preliminary inquiries have led the police to believe that Pravesh might be suffering from mental disorders. They said he had tried to take his own life twice.
While Ghaziabad SSP Amit Pathak has asked different teams to work out the case, the senior cop hinted that more arrests are expected soon as raids are being conducted to arrest the other three accused persons who are absconding.
"Police investigations have revealed that main accused Pravesh Gurjar, who is under arrest, is a history-sheeter with around three cases of extortion and assault slapped against him. We are also looking into the criminal history of other accused involved in the incident," the police officer added.