The Yogi Adityanath government has cracked the whip on the social media giant Twitter for not blocking fake manipulated video trying to pass off assault on a Muslim man, Abdul Samad Saifi in Loni, Ghaziabad as a hate crime. The muted manipulated video of an incident which happened on 5th June went viral on Twitter showing an old man being beaten up by young boys and chopping off his beard. Another video showed Abdul Samad along with a Maulana and a Samajwadi party leader, Umed Pahalwan wherein he states that he was beaten up for refusing to chant the Hindu religious slogan, “Jai Sri Ram” dedicated to Bhagwan Ram.

The video also cleverly gave out the name of only one attacker, a Hindu named Parvesh Gujjar. Hence giving totally a communal colour to a crime committed due to a private dispute. On investigation by police it was revealed that the original video did not show the religious slogan Jai Shri Ram was ever mentioned. In fact the boys were beating up Abdul Samad, an occult practitioner for giving them ‘Tabiz’ promising miracles, which never fructified. Infact the majority of the boys who beat up Abdul Samad were Muslims and were identified as Adil, Mushaid, Arif, Kallu and Poli other than Parvesh Gujjar who was Abdul Samad’s customer.

The Uttar Pradesh government has taken the matter very seriously and booked Twitter for not blocking the fake manipulated video from becoming viral as it endangered the communal peace of the state. With assembly elections drawing near, the government and the police are very vigilant about unscrupulous elements in the opposition parties and the so-called liberal secular media peddling fake news stories to flare communal tensions and riots to destabilise the government for scoring political brownies.

The Alt News & its founding member Mohammed Zubair ran a campaign amplifying the assault crime as a hate crime trying to provoke Muslims against Hindus and showing Hindus as oppressors of so-called minority Muslims. The Uttar Pradesh police is also initiating action against Alt News and Mohammed Zubair for deliberately spreading fake news and flaring up communal passions. Mohammed Zubair later tweeted that he has deleted the fake videos posted by him after news of UP police initiating action against Alt News trickled in. The Yogi government would not be in any mood to relent as the damage was already done by these fake news peddling outlets.

Rahul Gandhi peddled the same fake news by trying to portray a fake narrative that Hindutvavadis are committing hate crimes in the name of Lord Ram. CM Yogi Adityanath in a tweet schooled Rahul that Bhagwan Ram first teaches people to be truthful, which he has never done all his life. Yogi said that Rahul should be ashamed of lying despite the police revealing the truth. He chided Rahul for spewing communal venom in society in greed for gaining political power.

This issue has also brought to light the irresponsible behaviour of Twitter deliberately dithering to comply with requirements of the new IT laws which was enforced from 1st June, 2021. The government had warned Twitter that non-compliance of the law of the land would make it liable for third party actions on its platform and it would lose its Intermediary Status.

The FIR against Twitter for not blocking the manipulated video with mischief to cause communal tensions, would send the message to the social media giant that India means business and non-compliance of Indian laws would be very detrimental to Twitter’s business in India.

All said and done Yogi has proved to be a very effective, efficient and no-nonsense administrator nipping the mischief of trying to create mayhem and communal violence in the bud. More power to Yogi!

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