Uttar Pradesh Police on Monday filed a case under the National Security Act (NSA) against Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Ummed Pahalwan in connection with the Loni incident where an elderly man was beaten up.
UP Police had invoked NSA against Pahalwan on June 30, after he was arrested for allegedly stoking religious sentiments through his social media posts regarding the assault on a Muslim man in Loni.
However, the SP leader later approached District Magistrate, Session and Advisory Board with a plea to dismiss the charges against him. However, his appeal was dismissed and a case has been registered against him under the NSA.
"In Loni Police Station, a case of hate Facebook live speech and effort to escalate communal tension based on a false narrative has been filed against the local leader Ummed Pehlwan. He is booked under NSA. The NSA thus invoked stands approved and ratified by the Advisory Board, Lucknow," said Iraz Raza, Superintendent of Police (SP) Rural, Ghaziabad.
A team of Ghaziabad Police arrested Pahalwan on June 19 in connection with the Loni incident.
According to the FIR filed on June 7, Pahalwan was accused of making the video of the incident.
The Uttar Pradesh Police had earlier denied any communal angle in the case.
The police had on June 15 filed FIR against nine entities, including Twitter India in connection with the Loni incident.
In the FIR, the police had said, "There is no communal angle to the incident in Loni where a man was thrashed and his beard was chopped off. The following entities -- The Wire, Rana Ayyub, Mohammad Zubair, Dr Shama Mohammed, Saba Naqvi, Maskoor Usmani, Salman Nizami -- without checking the fact, started giving communal colour to the incident on Twitter and suddenly they started spreading messages to disrupt the peace and bring differences between the religious communities."
The Uttar Pradesh Police on June 18 sent a legal notice to the Managing Director of Twitter India Manish Maheshwari regarding the viral video of the assault on the elderly man in Loni.
( With inputs from ANI )
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