A First Information Report (FIR) has been filed against Zee News Editor-in-Chief and anchor Sudhir Chaudhary at the Kozhikode Kasaba police station, following a complaint that accused him insulting religious beliefs.
“On March 11, 2020, the accused presented content which was offensive to the Muslim community in his show titled DNA which is aired on Zee TV,” the FIR read. ‘DNA’ presented by the accused anchor is aired every day between 9 pm and 10:30 pm.
The complaint was filed by Advocate P Gavas, State Joint Secretary of All India Youth Federation or AIYF (the youth wing of CPI) Kerala. The FIR has been lodged under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or beliefs).
“The complainant had filed his complaint along with a copy of the episode aired on DNA on March 11 to the city police commissioner, Kozhikode. After the commissioner took a legal opinion on the issue, he forwarded the complaint to us to lodge an FIR,” the investigating officer of the case at Kasaba Police station told TNM.
Here’s my Pulitzer Prize for reporting the truth.Sharing the citation— an FIR filed against me by the Kerala police under nonbailable sections.The award for exposing inconvenient facts.A clear msg for media.If u don’t toe the decades old pseudo-secular line you’ll be behind bars. pic.twitter.com/zV3GvNg2YR
— Sudhir Chaudhary (@sudhirchaudhary) May 7, 2020
On March 11, 2020 — the date mentioned in the FIR — Sudhir had presented a highly controversial episode where he displayed a ‘jihad chart’ on the different kinds of jihad allegedly carried out by Muslims.
With the flow chart, he claimed that there were several kinds of Jihad which were carried out and further categorised them into ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ Jihad. The ‘Hard’ or ‘fundamentalist jihad,’ he claimed, consisted of ‘Population jihad’ — where Muslim people looked to marry multiple times and increase the community’s numbers, ‘Love Jihad’ - a term used to vilify Muslims marrying people from other religions, ‘Land Jihad’ - capturing as much land as possible to build mosques, cemeteries and madrasas in them, he claimed.
Another category termed ‘Soft’ jihad, he claims, includes ‘Economic’ jihad which he claimed means polarising people using business and wealth,’ ‘historical jihad’ - which he claims is when ‘history is manipulated to glorify Mughal rule’, ‘media jihad’ - in which journalists are being paid to speak in favour of Islam and ‘secularism jihad,’ in which ‘liberals, communists and others’ are being ‘employed’ to spread the message of secularism.
The programme, which was widely condemned for its anti-Muslim and communal content, also triggered massive outrage on social media.