Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan has been detained over a misleading broadcast, which alleged that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had referred to the Udaipur killing accused as children.
Cases had been filed against the anchor in Congress-governed Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. But as a team from the Chhattisgarh police reached his residence in Noida to arrest him with a warrant, he claimed that he had not been informed and sought the intervention of police authorities in Uttar Pradesh through Twitter.
"Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police, is it legal," the journalist tweeted.
The Raipur police tweeted that it wasn’t mandatory to inform him as they already possessed a warrant. "There is no such rule to inform. Still, now they are informed. Police team has shown you court's warrant of arrest. You should in fact cooperate, join in investigation and put your defence in court."
Chhattisgarh police reach the house of Rohit Ranjan, a Zee Hindustan journalist, to arrest him in connection with an FIR registered against him. He had earlier misquoted Rahul Gandhi’s video statement and had subsequently corrected himself on a TV broadcast. pic.twitter.com/ePVzGdUQCJ
— ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2022
The Ghaziabad police, meanwhile, reached Ranjan’s house, but he was eventually detained by the Noida police.
“People from all corners of the country feel this crime is barbaric, wrong, and the accused should receive a severe punishment. Being the senior-most leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi’s words matter a lot. But what message does it send if Rahul Gandhi himself is calling the accused ‘children’? Was Kanhaiya’s murderer, someone who killed him so brutally, a child?” the anchor had said on the show on June 1.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
