After Rana Ayyub, Ravish Kumar Is Fresh Target Of Online Hate Campaign, Gets Death Threats
Kumar has reportedly been receiving death threats and abusive phone calls day and night since April this year.
The online hate campaign against journalists seems to have picked up with the government turning a deaf ear to such incidents. After journalist Rana Ayyub received death threats over a fake tweet in her name, Ravish Kumar has become the fresh target of hate mongers. Kumar has reportedly been receiving death threats and abusive phone calls day and night since April this year after a fake quote attributed to him went viral on social media.
The fake news quoted Kumar as saying that he “supported the rapist in the rape of an 11-year-old in a madrasa in Delhi”.
Kumar said that he has been receiving abusive messages on WhatsApp as well and his family is also facing threat.
Kumar was unaware why such hate messages were being sent to him. Later, AltNews’s Pratik Sinha sent him a link after which he got to know about the fake quote.
Although Kumar denied making any such statement, the sender of the messages allegedly threatened that he would meet the same fate as late journalist Daniel Pearl.
Later NDTV, where Kumar is employed, alleged that the abuser was identified as Devendra, a former employee of Central Industrial Security Force. Devendra had apologised for being abusive.
Another person, Abhishek Tiwari, who claims to be the head of Bajrang Dal’s student unit in Jaunpur, threatened to kill Kumar.
According to The Hindu, last year, Kumar wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about an increase in the number of threat calls received by him ever since 2015. But there was no response from him. “I don’t think escalating the matter to Prime Minister will make any difference to him; in fact, he will happily start following the very persons who are abusing and trolling me,” he said.
Recently, journalist Rana Ayyub underwent a similar experience as Kumar. She was trolled on social media and even received death threats after a fake quote attributed to her went viral.
Ayyub’s morphed pornographic photos started doing rounds on social media and she received phone calls and messages soliciting sexual favours from her.
The United Nations human rights experts intervened on May 24 and called the Indian government to “urgently protect” Ayyub.
UN experts call on the authorities in #India to act urgently to protect journalist @RanaAyyub who has received death threats following an online hate campaign: https://t.co/DlPSLoTF6N pic.twitter.com/dfuqx4uTYG
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) May 24, 2018
According to Ayyub, she has received gang-rape and death threats for a fake tweet, which claimed she was supporting child rapists.