The Kerala Police on Thursday filed a first information report under non-bailable sections against Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary for making incendiary remarks about the Muslim community in his show.
“The highlight of the show aired on 11 March was the ‘jihad chart’,” the FIR stated, according to The Quint.“The accused presented a programme that is offending the Muslim religion.”
In his prime time programme on Wednesday evening, Chaudhary used a diagram to break down the many ways he alleged Muslims are waging “jihad” on Hindus in India. Chaudhary claimed there was “hard” and “soft” jihad. The first category, the anchor alleged, included “population jihad”, “love jihad” and “land jihad”. “Soft jihad” included “economic jihad”, “history jihad” and “media jihad”.
Chaudhary then went on to focus on “zameen jihad”, or land jihad, claiming, “Some people are playing the trick of capturing the government’s land to change the population in terms of religion.” He added that “Islamists” are even trying to “change the religion of land, jungles and rivers”.
The TV anchor lambasted the Kerala Police and said he was being “awarded” for “exposing inconvenient facts.” “Here’s my Pulitzer Prize for reporting the truth,” Chaudhary said in a tweet, attaching a copy of the FIR. “A clear message for media. If you don’t toe the decades old pseudo-secular line you’ll be behind bars.”
The allegations made by Chaudhary in his show were cheerfully received by many people on the internet, including Bharatiya Janata Party leader from Jammu and Kashmir, Nirmal Singh. However, others called out the programme’s dog-whistle politics. One user drew a comparison to Radio Rwanda and its complicity in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
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