Bihar YouTuber held under NSA over fake migrant video
Bihar YouTuber Manish Kashyap was detained by Tamil Nadu police under the National Security (NSA) Act on Thursday. Besides Kashyap, more than a dozen people were booked by the state police for circulating fake videos of migrant labourers being assaulted in Tamil Nadu. "But, he is the first person to be detained under the NSA Act in this issue," Madurai superintendent of police (SP) R Shiva Prasad told HT. Kashyap, 35 was running a channel called "Suspects News" on social media platforms, he added.
The Madurai crime branch had registered a case against Bihar YouTuber Manish Kashyap and a special police team went to Bihar to bring him to Madurai. (ANI)
The action comes a day after the Madurai district court remanded Kashyap to judicial custody for 15 days.
"We have been coordinating with the Bihar police on this issue," the SP said. "Now that he has been detained under the NSA, his case would be sent for review to an advisory board constituted by the ministry of home affairs within three weeks as per procedure. "If the advisory board approves, he would face a one-year prison term," SP Prasad said. The Madurai crime branch had registered a case against Kashyap and a special police team went to Bihar to bring him to Madurai. On March 18, Kashyap had surrendered in Jagdishpur police station in Bettiah when the attachment process of his house was in progress under the leadership of deputy inspector general (DIG) Jayant Kant in Majhaulia, HT had reported.
Economic offence unit (EOU) additional director general (ADG) NH Khan had informed that Kashyap will be interrogated by both the Bihar and Tamil Nadu police. More than 12 FIRs had been filed against individuals and institutions, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), by Tamil Nadu police after four fake videos started circulating on social media on March 1. Chief minister MK Stalin on March 4 called Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar to condemn the fake news and assured him that the migrant workers were safe in Tamil Nadu.
The state's director general of police (DG) Sylendra Babu warned of strict action against fake news peddlers. The 12 FIRs include cases against Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai, the Twitter handle of the BJP's Bihar unit @BJP4Bihar, BJP spokesperson Prashant Umrao, Dainik Bhaskar newspaper's editor, Mohammed Tanveer, OpIndia webportal's CEO Rahul Roushan, editor Nupur Sharma and other staffers.
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Divya Chandrababu is an award-winning political and human rights journalist based in Chennai, India. Divya is presently Assistant Editor of the Hindustan Times where she covers Tamil Nadu & Puducherry.
She started her career as a broadcast journalist at NDTV-Hindu where she anchored and wrote prime time news bulletins. Later, she covered politics, development, mental health, child and disability rights for The Times of India. Divya has been a journalism fellow for several programs including the Asia Journalism Fellowship at Singapore and the KAS Media Asia- The Caravan for narrative journalism.
Divya has a master's in politics and international studies from the University of Warwick, UK.
As an independent journalist Divya has written for Indian and foreign publications on domestic and international affairs.