New Delhi: The Bombay high court has granted protection from arrest to journalist Rana Ayyub for four weeks.
Ayyub has been named in an FIR by Uttar Pradesh Police for tweets about a Muslim man’s allegations of assault in Ghaziabad district. Also named in the FIR are The Wire, Twitter India, journalists Mohammed Zubair and Saba Naqvi, Twitter India and Congress leaders Shama Mohamed, Salman Nizami and Maskoor Usmani.
A single bench of Justice P.D. Naik gave Ayyub four-weeks’ transit anticipatory bail to enable her to approach the appropriate court to seek relief, LiveLaw has reported.
“In the event of arrest during the period of four weeks, the applicant be released on executing a PR bond of 25,000 with one or more sureties,” Justice Naik ordered.
The report mentions Ayyub’s counsel Mihir Desai as having highlighted Ayyub’s career as a journalist of global renown and that when conflicting versions emerged about the incident Ayyub deleted her tweet on the Ghaziabad attack.
“He also told the bench that Ayyub had recently undergone a spinal surgery and therefore required 3-4 weeks time to approach the jurisdictional courts in Uttar Pradesh,” LiveLaw noted.
Also read: Late Night FIR Against Twitter, Opposition Leaders, Journalists for Posts on Ghaziabad Attack
There has been severe criticism of the FIR from global and domestic media bodies who have regarded this as an infringement upon free speech and media freedom.
Journalists’ groups and bodies like Reporters Sans Frontiers, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Editors Guild of India and the Mumbai Press Club and Digipub have condemned the move to single out journalists and organisations for tweets that were shared multiple times and reported upon by several outlets.
Uttar Pradesh police are investigating the Ayyub, the two journalists and The Wire for what the complainant has claimed are violations of sections 153 (provocation to cause a riot), 153A (promoting enmity between religious groups), 295A (insulting religious beliefs), 505 (public mischief), and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.
While the police claims that there was no communal angle to the attack in Ghaziabad, the victim’s family has challenged the police’s version.