Loni case: Police arrest man accused of filming assault

The accused, Ummed Pahalwan, was arrested from near Capital's Lok Narayan Jai Prakash Hospital, Ghaziabad SSP Amit Pathak told the media.

The Uttar Pradesh Police said on Saturday they have arrested another person in connection with an incident in Ghaziabad's Loni where an elderly Muslim man was assaulted by a group of six men on June 5.

Loni case: Police arrest man accused of filming assault

The accused, Ummed Pahalwan, was arrested from Delhi, Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Amit Pathak told the media.

"A team of Ghaziabad Police has arrested Ummed Pahalwan from near Lok Narayan Jai Prakash Hospital in Delhi. He will be brought here for further investigation," Pathak said.

According to the FIR filed on June 7, Pahalwan is accused of shooting the video of the assault, which went viral on social media.

The victim, 72-year-old Sufi Abdul Samad, was beaten up by a group of men, who allegedly made him chant "Jai Siya Ram," besides forcibly chopping off his beard. However, in the FIR, the police have ruled out any communal angle to the case, saying that Samad was beaten up over a "personal dispute," adding that his attackers included both Hindus and Muslims. The victim's family, however, has questioned the police's narrative.

On Tuesday, the police filed another FIR in connection with the incident, naming nine entities, including Twitter India. Others who have been named in the FIR include online news portal The Wire; Congress leaders Dr Shama Mohammed, Salman Nizami and Maskoor Usmani; senior journalists Rana Ayyub and Saba Naqvi; and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair.

Those named in the FIR have been accused of falsely giving communal colour to the incident, without checking the facts. Twitter, the police have said in the FIR, "did nothing to prevent the video from going viral."

On Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh Police sent a legal notice to Twitter India managing director Manish Maheshwari to appear before it within seven days for questioning over the video of the incident.

(With inputs from PTI)