Journalists Zubair & Naqvi Appear at Loni Police Station Over FIR

The two have been charged by the UP police for giving communal colour to the assault of an elderly man in Loni.

Loni Border Police Station.

(Photo: Shiv Kumar Maurya/The Quint)

Journalists Mohammed Zubair and Saba Naqvi on Monday, 28 June, reached the Loni Border Police Station to record their statements in response to a notice issued by the Ghaziabad Police, in connection with their reportage on the assault of an elderly man in the Loni district last month.

After the video of a 72-year-old Muslim man, Abdul Samad Saifi, being brutally beaten up in Ghaziabad’s Loni went viral on social media, many shared the video claiming the incident of being a communally motivated hate crime.

However, the Uttar Pradesh police had denied such allegations. Further, the Ghaziabad police filed an FIR on Tuesday, 15 June, against nine entities on the charges of inciting communal disharmony.

The police stated, “The following entities – The Wire, Rana Ayyub, Mohammad Zubair, Dr Shama Mohammed, Saba Naqvi, Maskoor Usmani, Salman Nizami – without checking the fact, started giving communal colour to the incident on Twitter and suddenly they started spreading messages to disrupt the peace and bring differences between the religious communities.”

The Ghaziabad Police noted in their FIR, “There is no communal angle to the incident in Loni where a man was thrashed and his beard was chopped off,” news agency ANI reported.