Rohit Ranjan at his Ghaziabad home on Tuesday, when police from Chhattisgarh and UP landed there.
When Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan was taken away by police from Noida in BJP-ruled UP — to allegedly thwart his arrest by a team from Congress-run Chhattisgarh — he was not even named in the UP Police FIR yet. He is facing cases over a misleading video of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Uttar Pradesh's Noida and Ghaziabad police were at loggerheads with their Chhattisgarh counterparts who landed here on Tuesday morning with an arrest warrant and a court order against the anchor over the "doctored video" aired on the show DNA. In the video, Rahul Gandhi says that those who vandalised his office in Wayanad (Kerala) be forgiven as they are just kids; but the doctored clip made it look like he was saying that about the men who killed a tailor in Udaipur.
On Tuesday, when the police team from Raipur in Chhattisgarh reached Mr Ranjan's home in Ghaziabad around 5.30am, he was first taken into custody first by the Ghaziabad police and then by the Noida police, which had lodged an FIR under the Indian Penal Code section 505(2) (statements creating enmity between classes) just half an hour earlier. He was released soon after.
In this Noida FIR, lodged on a complaint by Zee itself, the channel blamed two producers and said they have been sacked. It was not immediately known if the anchor's name was added later to the FIR, on the basis of which he was picked up around 9 am Tuesday, news agency PTI reported.
In a statement on Tuesday night, the Noida police said Rohit Ranjan was arrested by them as part of an investigation in a case under Indian Penal Code section 505(2). "After interrogation, he was arrested on the basis of evidence. He has been released on bail as the sections against him are bailable offences. Further investigation in the case is underway,” the Noida Police said.
While Rohit Ranjan's phone has been switched off since Tuesday, PTI's text messages to the TV anchor for his response remained unanswered.
Both the Ghaziabad and the Noida police in Uttar Pradesh are yet to respond to allegations of non-cooperation by their visiting Chhattisgarh counterparts, who stayed put in the National Capital Region for a second day Wednesday to trace Ranjan.