Days after an Assam journalist booked in two cases was released on bail in Guwahati, the state police arrested his brother in an unrelated matter, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.

The journalist, Dilwar Hussain Mozumder, was released from the Guwahati Central Prison on March 29 after he got bail in the two cases filed against him. One of the cases was filed under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, while the second case was filed under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for allegedly trespassing a bank.

Dilwar, who works with digital news outlet The CrossCurrent, was arrested on March 25 after he sought to ask questions to Dombaru Saikia, the managing director of the Assam Co-operative Apex Bank, regarding alleged financial irregularities. Earlier that day, the Jatiya Yuva Shakti, the youth wing of the Assam Jatiya Parishad, had held a protest against the alleged irregularities.

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is a director of the Assam Cooperative Apex Bank and Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Biswajit Phukan is its chairman.

On Monday, the police arrested the journalist’s elder brother Tayabur Rahman Mozumder based on a case filed against him earlier in the day, The Indian Express quoted the officer in charge of Hojai police station, Dandadhar Choudhury, as saying.

Tayabur had been arrested in 2021 during a state government operation against brokers in land revenue and circle offices. On Monday, he was booked on allegations of cheating and breach of trust in connection with “recent offences”, the Hojai police station in-charge said.

Sarma on Tuesday said that a chargesheet had been filed against Tayabur in 2021. “But even after the chargesheet, he has been teaching in a school; the government had not even suspended him,” he said, according to The Indian Express. “That shows how deeply they are working below the government.”

On Dilwar, the chief minister alleged: “Dilwar is also a dumper businessman; he has no qualities of a journalist. Go to Hojai and ask… The whole family is known as land brokers.”

Sarma had said last week that the government did not consider Dilwar as a journalist as he worked with a digital news portal. The chief minister added that Dilwar was not arrested in matters related to journalism.