The Supreme Court has agreed to hear on Thursday the plea of Zee TV news anchor Rohit Ranjan, facing several FIRs in some States for playing a doctored clip of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, seeking protection from coercive action for the alleged offence.
“List it tomorrow,” a vacation Bench of justices Indira Banerjee and J K Maheswari said when senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, appearing for the TV anchor, sought an urgent hearing of the plea in view of registration of several FIRs against him in many States for telecast of the clip.
“This man was arrested yesterday by UP police at Noida and released on bail as the offence invoked was bailable, “ he said, adding that the anchor made an error in one of the shows and apologised for that and the news was taken back. “Now Chhattisgarh police want to arrest him. Please list this urgently since otherwise he will be in repeated custody,” the senior lawyer said.
On Tuesday, a police team from Chhattisgarh reached Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad town to arrest the anchor from his home but he was instead arrested by the Noida police who released him on bail later on Tuesday night. Congress MLA Devendra Yadav filed complaint against Rohit Ranjan for misquoting Rahul Gandhi’s statement.
In his complaint, Yadav said a video, in which Rahul Gandhi described those attacking his Wayanad office as children and said he had no ill-will against them, was "mischievously" used by the TV channel on July 1 to suggest he was forgiving the killers of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal. The FIR in Raipur was lodged under IPC sections including 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class), 467 (forgery), 469 (forgery to harm reputation), 504 (intentional insult).
On July 2, a day after video was aired, Ranjan had apologised for mistakenly playing Gandhi's statement out of context by linking it with Udaipur murder case. "It was a human error for which our team is apologetic. We apologise for it," he had tweeted in Hindi.