New Delhi, 8 July 2024: The Indian Journalists Union expresses serious concern over the Uttar Pradesh police lodging FIRs against journalists Zakir Ali Tyagi and Wasim Akram Tyagi and three others on Friday for alleging on social media that a Muslim man Qureshi had been lynched by a mob in the Jalalabad town of Shamli district on Thursday. A day later Thana Bhawan police station also filed an FIR against YouTube channel Hindustani Media for promoting enmity between groups under section 196 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and circulating false information to promote enmity, under section 353(2). The Union demanded withdrawal of the FIRs.
The FIR was filed following a complainant saying the channel had published a video presenting wrong information and made allegations of mob lynching, which had the potential to provoke communal disharmony. Apparently, the channel, has over three lakh subscribers and is run by Sadaf Kamran, a journalist from Bihar. It focuses on matters related to the Muslim community.
According to Qureshi’s family he had gone to the Aryanagar area for some work where he was beaten up. While he was rescued by some men, he died at home at 11 pm. The police filed a separate FIR in connection with Qureshi’s death based on his family’s complaint, invoking charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder against unknown persons under section 105 of BNS. However, it denied it was a case of mob lynching and claimed Qureshi was ‘beaten up by a few men when he entered their home. But he died at his [own] home. We have also conducted a post-mortem.’
As per reports Zakir Ali Tyagi was arrested in 2017 by the UP Police for two of his Facebook posts – one of them a joke about the criminal record of Chief Minister Adityanath He was booked under the Information Technology Act and spent 42 days in jail. He was again arrested in august 2020 for alleged cow slaughter, under the UP Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act. In December 2022, a court issued an externment order against Tyagi under the UP Control of Goondas Act, barring him from entering his home district of Meerut for three months.
In a statement, IJU President and former member of Press Council of India Geetartha Pathak and Secretary General and Vice President of International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) Sabina Inderjit said the FIR was clear misuse of criminal laws and an attack on press freedom. The fact that Tyagi was repeatedly targeted by the UP Police, smacks of harassment and intimidation, which would have a chilling effect on the media.
