Mohammed Zubair of the Alt News, which routinely peddles fake news and anti-Hindu hatred under the garb of ‘Fact Checking’ has been caught with its pants down by the Uttar Pradesh Police trying to spread fake news and incite communal tensions by running manipulated video to mischievously defame Hindus and the religious slogan Jai Shri Ram.

The Uttar Pradesh Police has taken cognisance of Alt News’ Mohammed Zubair spreading fake news and causing communal tension by circulating a manipulated muted video of an old Muslim man, named Abdul Samad Saifi, being thrashed by a group of young men and claiming falsely that the old man was thrashed for refusing to chant Jai Shri Ram.

Yesterday, video of an old Muslim man Abdul Samad Safi being beaten up by some boys went viral and was aired by Alt News on twitter by Mohammed Zubair. The video was kept mischievously muted. In another video the same old man could be seen in presence of a Maulana saying that he was forced to chant Jai Sri Ram.

This potentially communal video was investigated and traced by the UP police. The UP police found that there was no reference to Jai Sri Ram in the original video. The police also found that most people beating up Abdul Saifi were Muslims.

Anti-Hindu propagandists only named Parvesh Gujjar as the assaulter, whereas the other assaulters identified by the police are Arif, Adil, Mushahid, Kallu and Poli. Abdul Samad was into occult practice and used to distribute ‘Tabiz’ to people claiming to cure all problems miraculously in exchange for money. The boys thrashing Sammad felt cheated as his ‘Tabiz’ was not giving them the miracles promised by Samad.

According to senior journalist, Swati Goel Sharma the Ghaziabad SP Dehat told her that three of the assaultershave been arrested so far – Adil, Parvez and Kallu. She was also informed that the SP has seen the original video of the beating up with the audio not being muted. The video has no record of Jai Sri Ram ever being mentioned as per the SP. The boys beating up Samad were saying, “Tu aisa kaam karta hai” (‘You do this kind (fraud) of work’) type statements.

The UP police said that the video was deliberately uploaded on social media keeping it mute to further fake propaganda. The mastermind behind this propaganda is said to be Samajwadi Party man named Umed Pahalwan. He is said to be sitting beside Abdul Samad when he makes false claims of being beaten up for refusing to chant Jai Sri Ram. But he was actually beaten up because his Tabiz did not produce the miracles he promised to the young men.

The SP also reportedly told that Abdul Sammad has not yet shown up at the police station for questioning despite sending him several reminders. When he did turn up last night, he left soon making excuses of having stomach ache. Abdul was reportedly beaten up on June 5th, but he never filed a police complaint. On 7th June SP leader did a Facebook Live on 7th June with Jai Sri Ram claims. The police learnt about this incident of assault through the Facebook and approached Abdul Sammad. The muted video appeared on the social media one week later.

The Police had registered a FIR based on the statement given by Abdul Sammad which does not even mention Jai Sri Ram. Also, Abdul failed to identify any of his attackers even though Parvesh gujjar was his client.

The Uttar Pradesh Police is now all set to take action on portals like Alt News and Mohammed Zubair for deliberately spreading fake incendiary news and putting up manipulated video content to cause communal unrest in society. Notably, usual suspects like Rana Ayyub and Swara Bhaskar repeated the fake news peddled by Mohammed Zubair to generate an outcry against devout Hindus who use the holy salutation, ‘Jai Sri Ram’ by trying to make it sound like a communal war cry and create a false notion of Hindus trying to impose their religious practices on Muslims.

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