Nagpur violence: Court remands 17 accused in police custody till March 22
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Nagpur (PTI): A local court here has remanded 17 persons arrested in connection with Monday's violence in the city in police custody till March 22.
The accused were produced on Thursday night before magistrate Maimuna Sultana during which the police sought their custody for seven days.
The persons have been arrested in connection with an FIR registered by the Ganeshpeth police.
The court in its order said the offences levelled against the accused were “serious in nature” and hence their custodial interrogation was required.
It added that since a mob was involved in the violence, it would not be possible for the police to attribute specific roles to each and every accused at this stage.
The probe in the case is at a preliminary stage and a thorough investigation is yet to be completed, the court said in its order.
Assistant public prosecutor Megha Burange said the accused persons’ custodial interrogation was required to ascertain the masterminds and main perpetrators of the crime.
She further said the accused had created terror among citizens and had also assaulted a few police personnel.
The lawyers of the accused, however, opposed the police claims and said no specific role was attributed to the arrested persons and even the charge of criminal conspiracy is not included in the case. They also alleged that police had randomly arrested individuals without any evidence.
Large-scale stone pelting and arson were reported in several parts of Nagpur on Monday evening after rumours began circulating about a ‘chadar’ with holy inscriptions being burnt during protests led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad seeking the removal of Aurangzeb’s tomb in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district.
Thirty-three police personnel, including three DCP rank officers, were injured.
Police have booked Fahim Khan, key accused in the violence, and five others on charges of sedition and spreading misinformation on social media.
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
