A day after the Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh police face-off, the Supreme Court has listed for hearing a petition filed by Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan in a case concerning the airing of a misleading clip pertaining to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. Meanwhile, the Chhattisgarh police on Wednesday appeared at the doorsteps of the news anchor for the second time, to find the house locked. Ranjan was arrested by the Noida police on Tuesday, and was subsequently released on bail.
Following several FIRs lodged across many places, Ranjan’s advocate Siddharth Luthra knocked on the SC’s doors, and sought an immediate hearing of a plea seeking protection against any future coercive action. Ranjan’s counsel pointed out that the anchor was already released by the Noida police as the offence was bailable.
“This man was arrested yesterday by UP police at Noida and released on bail as the offence invoked was bailable,“ Luthra said before the top court, while adding, “Now Chhattisgarh police want to arrest him. Please list this urgently since otherwise he will be in repeated custody.”
Luthra also stated that Ranjan had apologised for the error already, after which, the news was withdrawn.
On Tuesday, as the Chhattisgarh police arrived in Ghaziabad to arrest Ranjan, they found out that the Noida police had already held the anchor on the basis of an FIR filed under IPC 505 (public mischief).
After visiting Ranjan’s house today, Raipur DSP Udayan Behar, who is in charge of the Chhattisgarh police team for this case, told The Indian Express, “We visited Rohit Ranjan’s home at 9 am today, but his house was locked.”
The Chhattisgarh police on Tuesday arrived at Ranjan’s house carrying a court warrant. The warrant was issued based on a complaint filed by Congress MLA from Bhillao, Devendra Yadav, alleging that the channel had “edited the clip and ran a false story” to “spread terrorism and break the nation’s unity.” On reaching Ranjan’s house, the Chhattisgarh police team saw that UP counterparts were also present at the same spot and took Ranjan for questioning in connection with a related case.
In a complaint given to SHO Indirapuram, Behar stated, “We were asked to show our identity cards as well as the arrest warrant. When we asked Ranjan to follow the due process prescribed under a court-issued arrest warrant, SHO Indirapuram arrived at around 9 am and informed us that warrantee Ranjan was being taken to Indirapuram station and asked us to accompany as well. Thereafter, Ranjan was taken away in a Maruti Swift car without us.”
However, a Ghaziabad police officer claimed that the Chhattisgarh police didn’t follow any due procedure and the local police were not informed about the arrest. “There are principles laid down which have to be followed by all police officials before making an arrest. Chhattisgarh police did not approach the local police station which they were bound to do,” the officer told IE.
Behar, while claiming that for Ranjan’s case no warrant was required, told IE, “Under Section 79(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code, if a police officer has a reason to believe that delay in obtaining endorsement from magistrate or local cops in whose jurisdiction the warrant is to be executed will prevent such execution, then police officer who has to execute the warrant can do so without such an endorsement in any place beyond the local jurisdiction of the court which issued it. Therefore we rushed to Ranjan’s residence as we did not want to delay the execution of the warrant.”
The Chhattisgarh police FIR was filed under IPC Sections 153A (promoting enmity between groups), 295A (outraging religious feelings), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 467 (forgery).
