Journalist Ali Sohrab was arrested in New Delhi on Saturday for his comments against political activist Kamlesh Tiwari who was hacked to death in October.
Sohrab, with over 1.6 lakh followers on Twitter, has been a prominent voice on social media. He tweets under the name ‘Kakavan’ and his bio on the microblogging site reads, ‘a fearful journalist’.
The Uttar Pradesh police had lodged an FIR against him at Hazratganj, Lucknow on charges of sharing objectionable content on the murder of Hindu Samaj founder. Sohrab will be taken to Lucknow from Delhi after securing his transit remand.
Tiwari was murdered on 18 October, at his residence in Lucknow.
An FIR was lodged against him on 20 October for uploading ‘repugnant’ posts on Twitter following the murder of Tiwari. He was accused of posting ‘hate against a specific religion,’ the Lucknow police had said in a statement.
He has been targeted by trolls for his posts on Kamlesh Tiwari, Ayodhya title dispute verdict and the abrogation of article 370 among others.
His advocate had tweeted about the arrest, stating none of the charges against him would entail punishment of more than 3 years and bail would be sought soon.
He also appealed to the people to not make the arrest a Twitter trend as that would make getting the bail very difficult. “Your Twitter trends are pretty useless and couter-productive in this case,” he tweeted.
Several took to social media to condemn this arrest and even pointed out that Muslims need to be careful with what they tweet, so that they don’t earn the wrath of the government, the law or the trolls.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)