Rana Ayyub Thanks Mumbai Cops for Arresting 2 for Spreading Fake News About Her

File image of journalist Rana Ayyub.

(Photo Courtesy: Facebook/ Rana Ayyub)

Journalist Rana Ayyub on Saturday, 5 March, thanked the Mumbai police for arresting two people who had allegedly spread fake news about her.

Taking to Twitter, Ayyub called the arrest "a big step in the direction of justice."

"Mumbai cyber crime today arrested the two journalists from Scoop Beats who made a video at the behest of their employers, spreading the most vicious fake news against me. This is a big step in the direction of justice. Thank you @CPMumbaiPolice," she wrote in a tweet.

What Had Happened?

In another tweet, Ayyub said that the two young journalists -Vidyanshi Krishkumar Trivedi and Ayush Chandramohan Srivastav - who have since been arrested by the police had accused her of "being aided by Pakistan", announced that she had been banned by Saudi Arabia, and attributed morphed anti-India tweets to her.

She informed that the two men said that their employers had asked them to do this "hit job" on her to tarnish her reputation.

According to a report in the Scroll.in, the two accused, who belong to Uttar Pradesh, had in January posted a video on the YouTube channel of online news portal Scoop Beats, which allegedly had fake news regarding Ayyub.

With the video circulating online, Ayyub began receiving rape and death threats, which prompted her to complain to the cyber police station at Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex. Following this, on 28 January, the police arrested four unknown persons in the case. A man from Bhopal was arrested in February for allegedly threatening to rape Ayyub, reported The Indian Express.

Later in February, the portal had issued an apology to the journalist and promised to take "stern action against their employees who were engaged in the production of the videos."

Speaking to The Indian Express, a police officer said that they had on 10 February arrested a man named Siddharth Shrivastav in the case. "Later, we identified a news portal that had published fake news about her. They had uploaded on their YouTube channel a video titled 'Saudi Arabia bans Rana Ayyub', in which they had made objectionable comments against her. They had even used doctored tweets in which they claimed that she expressed hatred for India."

(With inputs from The Indian Express, Scroll.in)