New Delhi: Condemning the witch-hunt of Journalists, Twitter users on Monday started a campaign on the micro-blogging site demanding the release of Journalist Prashant Kanojia.

The campaign that started at 4 pm on Monday, soon caught the pace and #ReleasePrashantKanojia was one of the top three trending topics on Twitter India at the time of posting this report, with over 20,000 tweets in less than two hours.

Journalist Prashant Kanojia was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police on August 18 from his residence in Delhi in connection with a tweet that he posted from his Twitter account.

“There were five-six people. Only one of them was in uniform. The rest were in civil clothes. At first, they gave us no reason as to why he was being arrested, except to say that orders had come from above.” Prashant’s wife Jagisha Arora had said after his arrest.

The FIR alleges that Kanojia had tweeted a morphed Facebook post by Sushil Tiwari of the Hindu Army, with the intent of defaming the latter.

The FIR notes that Kanojia’s tweet was objectionable and could have resulted in disturbing communal harmony, create tension between different communities, and hurt religious feelings, which can threaten law and order.

His wife Arora, however, had said, “He had not tweeted this at all. Someone edited that image to make it look so. I am 100 percent sure that he has not tweeted anything of the sort.”

This isn’t the first time Kanojia has had run-ins with the law. Earlier this year, an FIR was filed against him for making “objectionable remarks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on social media.

Several top political leaders and activists including Jignesh Mevani, Swara Bhasker and others tweeted in support of the campaign and demanded his release.

Here are some of the tweets from Monday’s campaign that demanded Kanojia’s release.

NOTE: The claims made in the tweets embedded below or the ideas presented in them are those solely of the users. Vartha Bharati does not guarantee the authenticity of any of the claims or does not necessarily endorse, support the ideas, views posted by any of the users. 

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Mathura (UP), May 16 (PTI): As many as 90 Bangladeshi nationals, including many children, were apprehended from Uttar Pradesh's Mathura district on Friday for alleged illegal stay in India, officials said.

They were taken into custody from local brickyards at Khajpur village under the Naujheel police station limits, a senior officer said.

"Regular searches were being conducted throughout the district. During one such operation, police were searching some local brickyards when they came across Bangladeshi nationals working there," SSP Shlok Kumar said.

Giving a break-up, the officer said in all, 35 men, 27 women and 28 children have been taken into custody.

"During interrogation, all of them admitted to being Bangladeshi nationals living illegally in India. They moved to Mathura three to four months back from a neighbouring state. Police are trying to establish their links," the SSP said, adding that their job contractor and other associates are also being questioned.

The officer told PTI that police also recovered some Aadhaar cards from the Bangladeshi nationals, apparently issued on forged documents in some other state.

Further legal proceedings are underway, Kumar said.