By Rehan Ansari, TwoCircles.net,
Mumbai: Two separate FIRs were lodged on Thursday against a newspaper and its reporter and an editor of a Marathi news channel for allegedly hurting the religious sentiments of the minority community.
Mumbai Mirror, a daily from the Times of India group, had carried a report ‘Teen attacked after parents refuse to give him up for ISIS’ , which claimed that “Mumbra police had booked six men, including four identified as maulvis, for allegedly beating up a 16-year-old boy and trashing his father’s car in an attempt to make him enlist to fight for ISIS.”
Sources said, the case/complaint by teenager’s mother was not related to ISIS but about rioting.
A complaint was lodged against the news paper and its reporter at Mumbra police station here claiming that the story is false. Earlier, Jamiat Ulema took up the cause, visited the masjid at Mumbra (in neighbouring Thane district, about 40-odd kms from Mumbai) and met the staff. Later, citizens protested at the Mumbra police station and registered a complaint against the mother of the teenager mentioned in the Mumbai Mirror story and her husband.
Sources claimed, “This lady – teenager’s mother – and her sister and husband, all have criminal cases related to property.
Police registered an FIR against the newspaper Mumbai Mirror and the reporter under section 295A of the IPC (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs).
Sources said, “It looks as if the family had concocted the story in order to frame other six persons.” The teenager’s mother was formerly with the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and now with Shiv Sena.
Neither anybody from the newspaper management nor the reporter concerned could be reached for their version.
In an entirely separate incident, an FIR under section IPC 295A (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) has been lodged against an editor of Marathi news channel IBN Lokmat at Mumbra police station.
The channel had reportedly carried a report showing a local mosque involved in rioting. The mosque and the madrassa staff lodged a complaint against the editor and police filed the FIR.
The editor or any channel representative could not be reached.