Scholar Madhu Kishwar and four others were booked in Uttar Pradesh by the Saharanpur Police on Sunday for allegedly disturbing peace by posting a video on social media about a sensitive incident that took place in 2017.

The case was registered after a video went viral claiming that a Muslim person had been mowed down in Deoband town by a vehicle carrying Kanwariyas – devotees on the annual Hindu pilgrimage of Kanwar Yatra, the police said in a statement on Sunday. The video claimed that the Kanwariyas have been booked for intentionally running over the Muslim person.

The Saharanpur Police had put out a clarification saying that the incident took place in 2017 and action had been taken in the matter. The police said that the video was misleading and false, and urged social media users to delete the posts.

However, Kishwar and four others did not take down the post. The four other social media users have been identified as SH@KT! proud Hindu, Shudha Shukla, Raj Kamal and Anil Mansingka.

Kishwar and the others have been booked in the Deoband police station under the Section 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code (publishing or circulating a rumour with intent to incite a class or community), and Section 66(D) of the Information Technology Act, the police said.

Kishwar is an alumna of the Jawaharlal Nehru University and has written on gender-related matters and politics. She is also a co-founder of Manushi, a journal on women and society, and wrote the book Modi, Muslims and Media: Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat in 2014.

She is a vocal supporter of the prime minister and often posts inflammatory social media content about Muslims. Many of her posts have been found to be factually incorrect by fact-checking websites.