The Uttar Pradesh Police on April 1 lodged two FIRs against Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of news portal The Wire, for allegedly attributing an incorrect statement to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. One of the FIRs was filed by the SHO of Kotwali Nagar police station. The FIRs come after Mrityunjay Kumar, the media advisor to Adityanath had warned Varadarajan of initiating an investigation and filing a defamation case against him if he failed to delete the incorrect attribution. “The Wire will have to ask for donations to fight the case apart from needing donations to run the website,” Kumar had said. https://twitter.com/MrityunjayUP/status/1245364562959859713 What the FIRs were about: Both FIRs were lodged in the Ayodhya district. One of the FIRs was filed by one Harbhajan Gaud, and invoked section 66D of the IT Act which involves punishment for cheating by personation by using computer resource, apart from invoking Sections 188 (disobedience to order issued by a public servant) and 505(2) (statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes) of the Indian Penal Code. The other FIR, filed by the SHO of Kotwali Nagar, Nitish Kumar Shrivastav invoked Sections 188 and 505(2) of the IPC. “Despite our warnings, neither did [Varadarajan] delete his lie nor did he apologise for it. We said an investigation would be initiated and an FIR has been filed. If you are thinking of spreading lies about the Yogi government, please remove such thoughts from your mind,” Kumar said while tweeting a copy of the FIR. In…
