'Speaking in the Upper House of India’s Parliament on Thursday on the recent communal violence in Delhi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah segued briefly into a topic that has gripped the country over the past year: Indian citizenship. Measures such as the Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed National Register of Citizens have pushed the concept of Indian citizenship and the role of religion in it to the centre of Indian politics.
'Coronavirus is declared a pandemic, India restricts the entry of foreigners, stock markets crash, Madhya Pradesh’s government teeters on the brink of collapse, a big private bank is in crisis, the home minister finally responds to questions about the Delhi carnage. These were the major news stories of March 11. For Sudhir Chaudhary of Zee News, however, the most important story of the day was…jihad.
'On 17 April 2018, the Pune Police raided the Delhi home of Rona Wilson, a noted prison-rights activist, and arrested him for his alleged role in the violence at the Bhima Koregaon memorial in January that year.
'A Times Now broadcast of March 5 ran a video of a man in red, wearing a helmet, opening fire during communal riots in Delhi. “New video of Delhi violence surfaces. Video reportedly from Maujpur…This is the 4th video of attack on police,” the channel claimed. The video was tweeted using #ShaheenLynchModel... A day later, the same clip was tweeted by BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya who insinuated that the shooter was a member of the Muslim community. He wrote, “Another video of a ‘peaceful’ protestor firing at the cops?
'Former Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday afternoon, in the presence of party president J.P. Nadda. “I would like to thank J.P. Nadda ji, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah that they invited me to their family and gave me a place in it,” he said. Sources have suggested that Scindia will likely be given a Rajya Sabha nomination from Madhya Pradesh and a cabinet ministerial berth for switching over...'
'AAP councillor Tahir Hussain has been linked with the murder of IB staffer Ankit Sharma who was found dead in a drain close to Hussain’s house on February 26. Since then, the AAP leader has been suspended from the party and is now under police custody. The reportage around Tahir Hussain and communal riots in Delhi comprises several reports that weren’t journalistically sound.
'On Sunday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Yes Bank’s swashbuckling co-promoter Rana Kapoor, accusing him and his family of using shell companies to receive kickbacks from the bank’s corporate borrowers. On March 5, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had used its powers to supersede the bank’s board and impose restrictions on its operations. The bank’s depositors cannot withdraw more than ₹50,000 for the next four weeks at least. Predictably, the State Bank of India (SBI) has emerged as Yes Bank’s knight in shining armour.
'Four images have been shared hundreds of times in multiple Facebook and Twitter posts alongside a claim that they show a Muslim restaurant owner in the Indian city of Coimbatore mixing impotency pills in biryani before serving it to non-Muslim customers. The claim is false; the photos were taken from online sources unrelated to the restaurant; police in Coimbatore said there was “no truth” in the claim...'
'Six hours after the Information and Broadcasting Ministry issued a 48-hour ban on Asianet News over their coverage of the Delhi riots, the Malayalam news channel is back on air. On Friday, Asianet and MediaOne were barred for 48 hours by the ministry which alleged that their coverage of the recent Delhi riots had been biased, critical of the Delhi police and could have incited violence. While Asianet News is back on air, MediaOne has not resumed transmission.
'On March 6, 2020 several right-wing Twitter users in India tweeted screenshots of a tweet that called for 'butchering Hindus', from an account of an individual who claimed to be a correspondent with Al Jazeera and also claimed to have worked with The Wire, in the past. BOOM investigated the claim and found the account to be spurious with both organisations outrightly rejecting the claim that the person behind the account was in any way connected to them...'
