A team of Chhattisgarh Police on Wednesday stayed put in the national capital region for a second day as it continued its search with an arrest warrant for a TV news anchor for airing a doctored video of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, officials said.
The police team from Raipur had reached the Ghaziabad home of the TV anchor on Tuesday morning but he was taken into custody by the Noida police amid a high drama also involving the local Ghaziabad policemen.
On Tuesday night, the Noida police said they had released Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan on bail after questioning him. They said Ranjan was arrested on the basis of evidence in a case lodged by it under IPC section 505 (2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes.)
However, the visiting Chhattisgarh Police officials claimed that their counterparts in Noida and Ghaziabad were not sharing any information regarding the whereabouts of Ranjan with them despite an arrest warrant and a court order.
"The Chhattisgarh Police team reached the TV anchor's home in the Indirapuram area of Ghaziabad again on Wednesday morning but he was not there. The team is expected to go to his office in Noida Filmcity later in the day," a source privy to the probe told PTI.
Congress workers in Noida on Tuesday staged a protest outside the Sector 20 Police Station and claimed that the Uttar Pradesh Police was protecting the TV anchor from being arrested by the Chhattisgarh Police.
The FIR in Raipur was lodged under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class), 467 (forgery), 469 (forgery to harm reputation), 504 (intentional insult).
On July 2, a day after the video was aired, Ranjan had apologised for mistakenly playing Gandhi's statement on vandalisation of his Wayanad office out of context by linking it with the Udaipur murder case.
"It was a human error for which our team is apologetic. We apologise for it," he had tweeted in Hindi.
However, the video was used by several people, including BJP leaders, to attack Gandhi and the Congress party after the Udaipur murder on June 28.
The assailants in Udaipur purportedly admitted their crime in a video clip, saying it was meant to avenge an insult to Islam.
FIRs have been lodged in Chhattisgarh's Bilaspur and Raipur, in Uttar Pradesh's Noida, and in Rajasthan in connection with Gandhi's doctored video.
Congress legislator Yadav, whose FIR in Raipur led to the Chhattisgarh Police action, has also accused the director and chairman of Zee News, and its chief executive officer for conspiring to spread fabricated and fake news against Gandhi in a bid to incite communal riots and disturb social harmony, a police official said.
