The Supreme Court on Friday directed the authorities not to take any coercive action against Zee Hindustan anchor Rohit Ranjan in connection with the multiple first information reports filed against him after the news channel aired a doctored video of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on July 1, reported Bar and Bench.
In the video, Gandhi had made a comment about the Students’ Federation of India for attacking his Wayanad office on June 24. Gandhi described the attackers as children and said he had no ill-will against them, the Congress said.
Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh said that the clip was doctored to make it appear as if Gandhi’s was commenting about the killers of a tailor in Udaipur.
Ranjan’s lawyer and senior advocate Siddharth Luthra had made a second consecutive oral mentioning on Thursday to urge the court to hear his plea urgently.
At Friday’s hearing, Luthra told a bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and JK Maheswari that the offences in the FIRs are the same.
“One inadvertent error [the doctored video] was made and show was taken off air,” he added.
A vacation bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and JK Maheshwari granted him interim protection.
On Tuesday morning, high drama unfolded outside Ranjan’s home in Ghaziabad as police officers from Bharatiya Janata Party-led Uttar Pradesh and Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh fought to get Ranjan’s custody. Ranjan was arrested by the Noida Police on Tuesday and released on bail later in the day.
The Raipur Police on Wednesday declared Ranjan as an absconder after they could not find him at his home.
In his plea, Ranjan had said that the news segment that contained the doctored footage was retracted when the channel realised that it had factual inaccuracies. The plea said that news channel deleted all related social media posts and Ranjan issued an apology on air.
It said that even though the channel had taken corrective steps for an “unintentional error”, multiple FIRs were filed against Ranjan.
“Due to numerous FIRs already registered and multiple complaints filed in various states, which may also be converted into FIRs, the petitioner is being hounded by police from several states for an act which was neither intentional nor motivated and for which an unconditional apology has already been tendered and telecasted,” the petition added.
Congress asks Lok Sabha speaker to act against three BJP leaders
Eleven Congress Lok Sabha MPs wrote to Speaker Om Birla on Friday against the “unethical conduct” of BJP counterparts Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Subrat Pathak and Bhola Singh, PTI reported.
The three BJP leaders had shared the doctored video of Rahul Gandhi.
On Saturday, Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh accused Rathore of deleting and uploading the video again.
The Congress MPs, including the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, have urged Birla to refer their complaint to the Ethics Committee of Parliament for examination.
They alleged that the BJP MPs shared the fake and distorted news on their social media accounts for the sole purpose of spreading disinformation. The doctored clip was widely amplified on social media with a malicious intent to incite physical harm against Gandhi and further vitiate the environment of hatred, the Congress MPs said.
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