Several journalist associations have hit out at the police action against two Delhi-based independent journalists, who were booked under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for sharing “malicious” posts claiming an incident of mob lynching in Shamli district.

After Digipub called it a “grave overreach and misuse of criminal laws”, the Press Club of India backed the statement and underlined that while the police has contested the nature of incident, saying it was not communal, “there is no cause for filing cases against journalists who are putting out the information available to them”.

The police said the five men, including journalists Zakir Ali Tyagi and Wasim Akram Tyagi, as well as Asif Rana, Saif Allahabadi and Ahmed Raza Khan, shared “wrong information” about a man named Firoz Qureshi, who died at his home on the night of July 4.

According to the complaint lodged by Firoz’s family, he died at his house three hours after he was beaten up by three men, identified as Pinky, Pankaj and Rajendra, all residents of Ganga Arya Nagar. A case was lodged under BNS Section 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) on Friday last week. 

According to the post shared by the five men, Firoz was “killed by members of another community” on the suspicion of breaking into their house. An FIR was filed against the five under BNS sections 196 and 353 after a complaint by a sub-inspector, Manendra Kumar, of Thana Bhawan police station in Shamli. 

“Regarding the incident of deceased Firoz… Zakir Ali, Wasim Akram Tyagi, Asif Rana, Saif Allahabadi and Ahmed Raza Khan posted/reposted from their X account… They wrote that late at night in Jalalabad town of Thana Bhawan police station area, a young man, whose name is said to be Firoz alias Kala Qureshi, was beaten to death by some people of another community on suspicion of breaking into the house. Anyone would kill someone like this and then say that he/she had suspicions.”

“Because of the tweets (posts) by the above persons on their X account, there is an enmity and anger among the people of a particular community… Due to this, there is every possibility of communal harmony and local peace getting disturbed. Please take legal action in this regard.”

However, Wasim Akram Tyagi told Newslaundry, “An attempt is being made to place a heinous crime like lynching under the category of an ordinary crime. In Aligarh lynching, a case was registered against the deceased and his family under serious sections, and now a case has been registered against journalists in the Shamli case. This is not only a challenge to the freedom of press but also a challenge to human rights. As a journalist, our job is to report the incident and raise questions by highlighting the shortcomings of the administration. If an FIR is lodged against the journalist, then who will write about it? Who will speak up? In such cases, filing a cross-FIR is like protecting the accused.”

“My question to Shamli police was that if a person has died, why was a murder case not registered against the accused? For the ‘crime’ of asking this question, an FIR was filed against me,” Tyagi said, adding that he will approach the court.

Zakir Ali Tyagi said, “We are being threatened on X. Look, this is our profession, even if someone tries to threaten us, we will not back down.”

Newslaundry reached out to the Thana Bhawan police station in-charge for comment. This report will be updated if a response is received.

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