Chhattisgarh cops' bid to arrest scribe a reminder of Emergency: BJP

NEW DELHI: Reacting to Chhattisgarh police raid in the wee hours to arrest journalist Rohit Ranjan, BJP on Tuesday said Congress brazenly uses Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh police, the only two states they are relevant in, to target journalists working out of NCR.
"You can disagree with someone's opinion but intimidating them like this is a grim reminder of Emergency.Congress is a blot on democracy...," BJP IT department head Amit Malviya said.
The BJP leader said that going into 2024, it is likely that Congress may not have government in a single state, but it is so drunk on the "memories" of power that it is targeting journalists, both online and using police machinery, with impunity.
"Then they wonder they have been pushed to the fringe!", Malviya said.
A police team from Raipur reached UP's Ghaziabad town on Tuesday to arrest a TV news anchor from his home for playing a "doctored" clip of Rahul Gandhi. However, he was later taken into custody by Noida police instead. Both the teams, one from BJP-ruled UP and the other from Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, landed at Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan's home at the same time. Rohit Ranjan was picked up from his home on Tuesday morning in connection with an FIR lodged under IPC 505 (public mischief), on a complaint by his own channel over a doctored video played during his show on July 1.
Ranjan spoke out on Twitter in a post in Hindi, questioning the legality of the Chhattisgarh police arresting him. "Chhattisgarh Police is standing outside my house to arrest me without informing the local police, is it legal?," the Zee News anchor asked and tagged UP CM Yogi Adityanath and the state police in the post.