The Uttar Pradesh Police on Saturday booked journalist Zakir Ali Tyagi and four others for alleging on social media that a Muslim man had been lynched by a mob in the state’s Shamli district.

The others are Wasim Akram Tyagi, Asif Rana, Saif Allahbadi and Ahmad Raza Khan.

The five persons were booked for promoting enmity between different groups under section 196 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and making statements conducive to public mischief under section 353.

On Friday, Zakir Ali Tyagi claimed in a social media post that a man Firoz, or Kala Qureshi, had died in a mob lynching incident in the Jalalabad town of Shamli district. He also named the persons who had allegedly beaten up Qureshi.

He had shared a photo of the complaint filed by Qureshi’s family, who claimed that he had been beaten up by a group of men that had caused his death. Qureshi’s family said that he had gone to the Aryanagar area for some work where he was beaten up. Qureshi was rescued by some men and he died at home at 11 pm, the family said.

The police had on Friday filed a separate first information report in connection with Qureshi’s death based on the family’s complaint, invoking charges of culpable homicide not amounting to murder against unknown persons under section 105 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.

On Sunday, Shamli Superintendent of Police Abhishek confirmed to Scroll that a first information report had been registered against Zakir Ali Tyagi and the four others at the Thana Bhawan police station.

“[Qureshi’s death] was not a case of mob lynching,” the superintendent of police said. “The man was beaten up by a few men when he entered their home. But he died at his [own] home. We have also conducted a post-mortem.”

The FIR quoted a complainant as saying that Zakir Ali Tyagi and others had posted on social media platform X about Qureshi, alleging that he had “died in a mob lynching incident”.

Qureshi was “severely beaten by people of some other community on the suspicion that he had entered their house”, the posts said, according to the complainant.

The first information report quoted the complainant as contending that the social media posts had sparked “hatred and anger” among individuals of a “particular community”.

Scroll has seen a copy of the first information report.

On Sunday, Shamli Police denied that Qureshi had been lynched. Zakir Ali Tyagi and the others had made the allegations with the “sole intent to provoke communal hatred without any consideration for facts on the ground”, the police claimed in a social media post.

Responding to the criminal case against him, Zakir Ali Tyagi told Scroll on Sunday: “Muslims are being lynched daily since the new government [at the Centre] was formed and I am being threatened by slapping FIR against me.”

The government was trying to silence journalists and citizens who were talking about crimes against Muslims, alleged Zakir Ali Tyagi. He added that this was not the first time he had been booked.

In 2017, Zakir Ali Tyagi was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police for two of his Facebook posts – one of them a joke about the criminal record of Adityanath, the newly-appointed chief minister at the time. He was booked under the Information Technology Act and spent 42 days in jail.

In August 2020, the Uttar Pradesh Police arrested Zakir Ali Tyagi for alleged cow slaughter, a crime that carries a sentence of 10 years in prison under the Uttar Pradesh Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act. Zakir Ali Tyagi denied the cow slaughter charge against him.

In December 2022, a court issued an externment order against Zakir Ali Tyagi under the Uttar Pradesh Control of Goondas Act, barring him from entering his home district of Meerut for three months. The prosecution had alleged that Zakir Ali Tyagi’s involvement in a cow slaughter case makes him a liability to the law and order situation in his village.

“I was attacked and even jailed for 58 days for being a journalist and raising voices of the voiceless, yet we will neither get threatened nor will we bow down but will continue to write against the oppression,” Zakir Ali Tyagi told Scroll.

Also read: A media student and a mystery caller: Muslims in UP village allege conspiracy in cow slaughter case