New Delhi: ‘The Wire’ journalist Arfa Khanum has been accused of furthering unverified news. Amroha Police took to Twitter to call out the news over Dalit discrimination spread by the journalist and forwarded the matter to the cyber cell to initiate necessary action against her.
Arfa had quoted a tweet from an untrue source asserting that a Dalit boy was killed in a temple for praying. “There’s no community in the world that’s more persecuted and oppressed than the Dalit community in India. When will this tyranny end ?” Arfa tweeted with the hashtag #DalitLivesMatter.
Amroha Police
However, within an hour of Arfa’s tweet, Amroha Police’s official Twitter account responded and clarified that the above unfortunate incident had nothing to do with caste bias but it was an internal fight over a sum of Rs 5,000.
Ruling out the caste dispute as to the cause of murder, the police informed about the arrest of 3 men in the case. Further investigation is underway.
Superintendent of Police, Amroha police station, Vipin Tada, also clarified that the dispute was over Rs 5,000 and not a Dalit praying in a temple.
“The victim had a partnership with the perpetrators of managing mango field and honeybee breeding. There was some dispute over the distribution of money which lead to fight. The youth then ran away from the village but they managed killed the victim,” said the police officer.
Khanum responds
#BanFakeNewsWire trended on Twitter after UP police asked Cyber Cell to take necessary action against her. Khanum thereby updated her Twitter account stating that she won’t bow down to the pressure by the men in power. Also called for supporting independent journalism to keep democracy alive.
Arfa Khanum Sherwani is an Indian journalist. She was the only Indian journalist to cover the 2014 Afghan presidential elections. She has received a Red Ink Award, the Sahitya Samman Award from the Hindi Academy, and the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Women Mediapersons. She is currently senior editor at The Wire.