Multiple press bodies have demanded the withdrawal of cases against journalists and news website The Wire, after the police in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad district on Wednesday named them in a case related to the assault of an elderly Muslim man.

Apart from The Wire, journalists Rana Ayyub and Mohammed Zubair have been named in the First Information Report, which alleges that the accused did not verify their tweets on the incident and thereby gave a “communal angle” to it. Writer Saba Naqvi, social media platform Twitter and three Congress leaders are also among the accused.

They have been booked under Sections 153 (provocation for rioting), 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295A (acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 505 (mischief), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

In a statement on the matter, the Committee to Protect Journalists demanded that the cases be dropped immediately.

“Indian authorities singling out journalists, some of whom are known for critical coverage of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, for sharing and commenting on a video looks suspiciously like selective law enforcement and amounts to a serious attack on press freedom,” said Steven Butler, the body’s Asia program coordinator.

The International Press Institute condemned the filing of the cases, adding that “legal harassment” of media organisations and journalists should immediately stop in India.

“The filing of criminal complaints has become an all-too-common method of harassing independent journalists and media in India,” International Press Institute Deputy Director Scott Griffen said. “News coverage and the sharing of information about events in the public interest is not a crime.”

The Press Club of India also demanded that the FIR be quashed, and appealed to the Uttar Pradesh government to ensure journalists are not made “easy targets of police high-handedness by filing FIR against them”, PTI reported.

“The filing of the FIR clearly shows vendetta of Ghaziabad police to create a sense of state terror in the media and society at large,” the Press Club of India said in a statement.

The Indian Women’s Press Corps expressed “shock and disappointment” and said that the Ghaziabad Police spending time and resources to go after journalists seemed to be an attempt to muzzle the media and divert attention.

“The appalling incident was a crime against a senior citizen belonging to a minority community, and the assault seemed communal in nature,” the journalists’ body said. “We urge the UP Police to focus on investigating the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice. We demand that the FIR against journalists and news organisations be quashed.”

The incident

The incident first came to light after a video of the Muslim man, identified as Abdul Samad, being assaulted in Ghaziabad district’s Loni area went viral on social media on Sunday. Samad was allegedly beaten up and his beard was cut off. Initial reports said that he was also asked to chant “Jai Shri Ram”.

The police had arrested the main accused, Parvesh Gujjar, on Sunday. On Tuesday, the police arrested two others – Kallu Gujjar and Adil.

The police said that Gujjar and his associates assaulted Samad because he had allegedly sold them an amulet that had a “negative effect” on their families. The statement added that Samad was in the business of making and selling amulets and was an earlier acquaintance of Gujjar and others.

The police’s statement was markedly different from Samad’s account. He had claimed in a video that the accused forced him to chant Hindu deity Ram’s name, when he was “praying to Allah” while being beaten up. He also said that the accused told him that they had beaten up many Muslims and showed him videos of people from the community being beaten up.