Zee News faces flak for allegedly airing Rahul Gandhi's doctored byte

Rahul Gandhi Image Courtesy: maktoobmedia.com

A huge political scandal erupted around the Udaipur beheading case, after television news channel Zee news on July 1, 2022, aired a doctored video of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi seemingly supporting the killers. The news channel apologised for its blunder and sacked two staffers but the party already approached the National Broadcasting and Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA) on July 6 say news reports.

According to Congress MLA Devendra Yadav, the original video shows Gandhi reacting to the vandalism of the party’s Wayanad office allegedly by SFI activists. The leader said the vandals were children and bore them no ill-will. These lines were corrupted in the Zee News version to falsely imply that Gandhi was forgiving killers of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal.

For this reason, Yadav filed a complaint against Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan and others at Zee News July 3 at the Civil Lines Police station in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, said the New Indian Express. He accused the channel of promoting enmity between different groups and outraging religious feelings of people.

Further, he accused the director and chairman of the channel and its chief executive officer of conspiring to spread fake news against Gandhi to incite communal riots. As such, Ranjan and others were booked under sections of deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class, forgery to harm reputation and intentional insult with intent to disrupt peace among others.

Then on July 6, Deccan Herald reported how the political party approached the NBDSA for the channel’s ‘DNA’ programme that showed an “illegal, unethical and malicious” report.

As per latest updates, The New India Express reported that the channel has lodged a complaint which said its senior producer Narinder Singh and trainee producer Bikash Kumar Jha received the video and allegedly caused the byte mix-up. The two were sacked for “knowingly and intentionally” creating that “mischief”.

Meanwhile, Ranjan faces more FIRs from the Bilaspur police station in Chhattisgarh police that also names five BJP leaders, the Noida police and the Ghaziabad police. He was initially arrested by the Noida police but then released on bail. The Chhattisgarh police claimed the Noida police obstructed the arrest procedure by taking Ranjan with them. Since then, Ranjan has been absconding although he apologised for the blunder on July 2.

“On July 1, in our show DNA, Rahul Gandhi’s statement was taken in the wrong context by linking it to the Udaipur incident, it was a human error for which our team is apologetic, we apologize for it,” said Ranjan in a Hindi tweet.

कल हमारे शो DNA में राहुल गांधी का बयान उदयपुर की घटना से जोड़ कर ग़लत संदर्भ में चल गया था, ये एक मानवीय भूल थी जिसके लिए हमारी टीम क्षमाप्रार्थी हैं, हम इसके लिए खेद जताते हैं pic.twitter.com/YGs7kfbKKi
— Rohit Ranjan (@irohitr) July 2, 2022

Further, the anchor approached the Supreme Court seeking protection from coercive action. The matter was listed to be heard on July 7 but is pending assignment by the Chief Justice of India.

Both supporters and critics of the TV channel have criticised the administrative move to arrest a news anchor for “misquoting” a political party leader.

Hearing that Rohit @irohitr has now been arrested after Congress workers protested, even burnt his effigy in response to his misquoting Rahul Gandhi, for which he had already apologised on air.
If journalists got arrested every time they misquoted Modi, there’d be none left. pic.twitter.com/LVxR3SYv54
— Anand Ranganathan (@ARanganathan72) July 5, 2022

We are no fans of @ZeeNews, they need to be called out & shamed daily for the ‘journalism’ they claim to do.
However arresting #Rohitranjan in this brazen manner does not solve anything – especially AFTER he explicitly apologised for the error within 24 hours
Get the bigger fish. https://t.co/QiLMDffxCf
— The DeshBhakt ?? (@TheDeshBhakt) July 5, 2022