Bengaluru: IAS officer Rohini Sindhuri filed a defamation suit against IPS officer Roopa D Moudgil in a city court on Monday.
Rohini Sindhuri appeared before the 24th Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) court with her husband Sudhir Reddy, reports New Indian Express.
Requesting for the arrest of Roopa, the IAS officer also claimed damages of Rs 1 crore in her petition.
Rohini Sindhuri said that, although the court had restrained Roopa from making allegations against her, Roopa continued to do so and thereby repeatedly defamed her. She cited the instance of Roopa referring to the Charamarajnagar hospital oxygen tragedy repeatedly on social media, although the government had conducted an inquiry into the matter. The IAS officer added that Roopa had been making allegations using personal matters.
The court directed to register a defamation case and adjourned the hearing till March 3.
Rohini Sindhuri had issued a legal notice to Roopa on February 22, asking for an unconditional apology on public platforms, removal of all posts related to her from her social media profiles as well as damages of Rs 1 crore.
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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.
