Two held by Mumbai Police for alleged involvement in hate campaign against journalist Rana Ayyub

The Mumbai Police’s Cyber police station on Saturday arrested two more accused in connection with the ongoing hate campaign against journalist Rana Ayyub.

The award-winning journalist has been on the receiving end of malicious and entirely false allegations as well as vicious threats for nearly a month, after a morphed tweet in her name was circulated on the internet.

According to police officials, the arrested persons have been identified as Vidyanshi Trivedi and Ayush Srivastava, both of them from Uttar Pradesh. They said that both are employed with online news portal Scoop Beats and had published a video on the portal’s YouTube channel about Ayyub.

In the video, they had shown an image of a tweet purportedly posted by her, saying that she “hates India and Indians”. They had gone on to make several false claims about her, including that she was aided by Pakistan and had been banned from Saudi Arabia.

“We had issued notices to both the accused, asking them to present themselves for inquiries. They came to the police station on Saturday and after inquiries established their offence, they were both placed under arrest. Inquiries have found that Ayush was the one who morphed the tweet in Ayyub’s name,” an officer who is part of the investigation said.

When contacted, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Rashmi Karandikar confirmed the arrests.

The police have already made one prior arrest in connection with the matter. The accused, Jayprakash Srivastava, was arrested for allegedly making death threats to Ayyub and is currently out on bail.

Ayyub took to Twitter on Saturday to express her appreciation and gratitude for the Mumbai cyber police.

“We had issued notices to both the accused, asking them to present themselves for inquiries. They came to the police station on Saturday and after inquiries established their offence, they were both placed under arrest. Inquiries have found that Ayush was the one who morphed the tweet in Ayyub’s name,” an officer who is part of the investigation said.

When contacted, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Rashmi Karandikar confirmed the arrests.

The police have already made one prior arrest in connection with the matter. The accused, Jayprakash Srivastava, was arrested for allegedly making death threats to Ayyub and is currently out on bail.

Ayyub took to Twitter on Saturday to express her appreciation and gratitude for the Mumbai cyber police.

“This is a big step in the direction of justice. Thank you. The two young journalists had accused me of being aided by Pakistan, announced that I had been banned by Saudi Arabia, and attributed morphed anti-India tweets to me,” Ayyub said in a series of tweets.

The video in question has already been taken down by Scoop Beats, who also issued an apology through social media.