UP Police asks Cyber Cell to take necessary action against The Wire journalist Arfa Khanum after she was caught peddling fake news

In yet another incident, ‘The Wire’ journalist Arfa Khanum was caught furthering unverified news. Amroha Police took to Twitter to call out the lies spread by the journalist and forwarded the matter to the cyber cell to initiate necessary action against her.

https://twitter.com/amrohapolice/status/1270638114445225990?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Earlier, Arfa had quoted a tweet from an unreliable source to assert 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.

https://twitter.com/khanumarfa/status/1270623849613193220?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

However, within an hour of Arfa’s tweet, Amroha Police’s official Twitter account responded, putting paid to the rumours of caste bias being the motive for the crime. Issuing a clarification, the Amroha Police repudiated Arfa’s claim of caste prejudice being the reason for the unfortunate incident and claimed that 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. The police further added that the dispute between the two parties was about an amount of Rs 5000 over land issues. 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 police officer said that the victim had a partnership with the perpetrators of managing mango field and honeybee breeding. There was some dispute over the distribution of money, and after that, the two groups fought. The youth then ran away from the village but to avenge it, they returned and killed the victim. The police have caught the suspect and further investigation is on.

However, before police issued the clarification, a large number of people had already shared the fake news, including the mainstream media organisations such as Hindustan Times, Telegraph, India Today.