Deeksha Sood –
Abdul Samad Saifi a 72 years old man was allegedly attacked by by two people and was forced to chant ‘Jai Shree Ram’ & ‘Vande Matram’.
Police stated that a video of the incident which took on 5th June was uploaded on social media platform a few days ago and it shows a man hitting elderly Muslim Saifi and trying to cut off his bread as the victim tries to evade the blows.
Saifi a resident of Bulandshahr was travelling to Loni at the time. He has alleged he was targeted because of his religion.
An F.I.R has been filed by U.P Police against social media platform Twitter, News website The Wire along with Alt news co-founder Mohammed Zubair, Congress politicians Shama Mohamed, Salman Nizami & Maskoor Usmani,
Journalist Rana Ayyub & Saba Naqvi for allegedly sharing a video on Twitter of the assault of an elderly Muslim man in Ghaziabad and giving it a communal colour without the authenticating the details.
The F.I.R has been registered under section 153, 153A, 295A, 505 and 120B of the IPC. (Provoking riots), (Promoting enmity between religious groups), (Insulting religious beliefs),(Statement inducing public mischiefs), (Punishment of criminal conspiracy) respectively, and has named twitter Inc. and twitter communication Pvt. ltd. as it failed to take down the tweets and allegedly allowed the video to go viral.
The FIR states that a video of an elderly man was circulated by few people on their social media handles, in which, some mischievous elements could be seen beating up an elderly man named Abdul Samad & they were forcefully cutting his beard and they forced him to chant “Jai Shri Ram” and “Vande Matrm. Further, naming the aforementioned people, the FIR alleges that they circulated the video of the incident on their Twitter handles, without checking and inquiring into the veracity of the video related to the elderly man and that they gave the video, a communal angle as they intended to incite communal hatred between the religious communities and wanted to disturb the public order.
Further it states that the clear intention of sharing the video indicates criminal conspiracy and they intended to incite communal hatred between the communities i.e. Hindu & Muslim.
The police have arrested three accused involved in this case and found that it was the personal matter between the parties which was showcased as communal dispute.
