After FIR against journalists, UP police book Bihar-based YouTube channel over ‘false allegations of mob lynching’

Hindustani Media is a Bihar-based media outlet run by a journalist, Sadaf Kamran. The police claimed that the YouTube channel kept running “false” information even after they rejected the claim of mob lynching.

The FIR was registered under sections 196 (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.) and 353 (2) [Whoever makes, publishes or circulates any statement or report containing false information, rumour or alarming news] of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

Earlier, the police registered an FIR against two Delhi-based journalists and three others under the same sections for posting “wrong information” on X about the July 4 incident. The journalists were identified as Zakir Ali Tyagi and Wasim Akram Tyagi and the others as Asif Rana, Saif Allahabadi and Ahmed Raza Khan.

The police have said there was no mob lynching in the July 4 incident, in which a man named Firoz Qureshi died at his home. “It was also informed earlier that it is clear from the postmortem report that the cause of death was not assault. The deceased had entered the accused’s house in an intoxicated state. The incident has been deliberately posted on social media as mob lynching with the aim of spreading communal hatred. Action will be taken as per the evidence in the concerned FIR,” they said in a statement.

According to the complaint lodged by Qureshi’s family, however, he was beaten up by three men—Pinky, Pankaj and Rajendra, all residents of Ganga Arya Nagar—around 8 pm and he died around 11 pm after reaching his home.

An FIR in this regard was registered under BNS section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) on July 5. No arrests have been made in the case so far, said the police.