New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Police arrested a journalist in Delhi Saturday for sharing an “objectionable” tweet on Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Prashant Kanojia was arrested by policemen wearing civilian clothes from his residence in West Vinod Nagar, which falls under the jurisdiction of Mandawali police station in Laxmi Nagar. Mandawali police, however, said they didn’t have any knowledge of Kanojia’s arrest.
The FIR against Kanojia has been lodged at Hazrat Ganj police station in Lucknow. Contacted by ThePrint, Senior Superintendent of Police, Lucknow, Kalanidhi Naithani said: “The case is very sensitive and is developing dynamically so far.”
Hazrat Ganj police station Inspector Radha Raman Singh said they have been strictly instructed to not speak anything about the case. It is being speculated that the Uttar Pradesh Police would soon bring Kanojia to Lucknow.
A former journalist with the web portal TheWire, Kanojia is now working as a freelancer.
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The founding editor of TheWire, Siddharth Varadarajan, expressed concern over Kanojia’s arrest in a tweet.
“Shocking for UP cops to arrest anyone for posting this news clip with a comment of his own. Adityanath perhaps doesn’t know this woman and may consider the fact that Prashant took her claim of having video-chatted with him at face value ‘objectionable’. But arrest is abuse of law,” he wrote.
As per preliminary information, Kanojia had shared a video on Twitter on 6 June in which a woman claimed to be in a relationship with Adityanath and expressed her wish to spend the rest of her life with him.
The woman claimed that Adityanath used to speak to her over video chat and now she wanted to know if he wants to spend his life with her.
The woman, who is seen speaking to various TV channels in the video, even challenged the chief minister to get her arrested if her claims are found to be untrue.
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