LUCKNOW/NEW DELHI/RAIPUR: As Supreme Court agreed to hear the plea of Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan on Thursday, seeking protection from coercive action for the alleged offence of airing a doctored video on Congress MP Rahul Gandhi leading to multiple police cases filed against him, the Chhattisgarh police knocked Ranjan’s door at his Indirapuram residence in Ghaziabad on the second day only to find it locked on Wednesday.
“List it tomorrow,” a vacation bench, comprising Justices Indira Banerjee and Justice JK Maheswari, said when senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing on behalf of the TV anchor, sought an urgent hearing of the plea in view of the FIRs.
After a high voltage drama between the Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh police on Tuesday to arrest the news anchor, the Noida police had finally taken him into custody and released him on bail after a prolonged interrogation in connection with the incident.
Ranjan is accused of having anchored a show on July 1 during which a doctored video clip of the Congress MP Rahul Gandhi was shown linking his comments on an SFI attack at his Wayanad office to the killing of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur.
On the other, the team of Raipur police claimed that besides reaching the house of the anchor in the morning to find it locked, the team, which is camping in Ghaziabad, also visited ZEE News office at Gautam Buddha Nagar on Wednesday evening to record statements of the staff but none of them cooperated.
The channel staff even refused to accept the notice of the police following which the same was pasted outside the office premises, said Raipur police team adding that they did not get cooperation from any quarter.
Meanwhile, the Noida police said they had acted on two complaints from Zee Media for a probe into the incident. “On the basis of both complaints, we registered an FIR under Section 505 (2) (statements conducing to public mischief) of the IPC,” additional DCP Ranvijay Singh told the media persons.
Noida police later issued a statement, saying Ranjan was arrested on the basis of evidence and released on bail as the section is bailable.
However, as per the sources of Noida police, Ranjan was initially not named as an accused in the FIR lodged just minutes before the Noida police reached his house in Ghaziabad. His name was added on FIR later.
In fact, the FIR was lodged at the Noida police station at 8.33 am and the anchor was picked up from
Ghaziabad around 9 am, said the sources.
The Noida police had lodged the FIR on the basis of the complaint given by BR Venkatraman on behalf of Zee Media Corporation on Sunday at the Sector 20 police station against a former senior producer Narinder Singh and a trainee producer Bikash Kumar Jha.
As per the complaint, the accused received a video feed from Asian News International (ANI) containing the press statement of the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi where he had condemned the recent attack on his constituency office in Wayanad, Kerala by SFI workers.
“However, due to oversight and inadvertence, the aforesaid statement of Rahul Gandhi was presented out of context in our show, which led to widespread protest against the company from various leaders and workers of the Congress party,” read the complaint.
“Against the aforesaid negligence, the company conducted an internal inquiry and terminated the services of Narinder Singh and Bikash Kumar Jha, who were found responsible for the aforesaid negligence,” the complaint added.
The television channel also claimed in the complaint that the two producers might have “knowingly and intentionally” used a statement by Rahul Gandhi out of context. The news channel sacked the two producers. However, the Noida police claimed that the dismissed producers named in the FIR were yet to be quizzed.