NEW DELHI: On Thursday morning, the Mumbai Police arrested two people in connection with an attack on Republic TV’s Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami and his wife.
An FIR was filed at the NM Joshi Marg Police Station under Indian Penal Code Sections 341 (punishment for wrongful restraint) and 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace), the police said.
In a video message, Goswami said that two men on a bike had attacked his car while he and his wife Samyabrata Ray were returning to their home around 12.15 am on Thursday. He said that the men initially tried to break the window panes of his car. But when they were unable to do it, and Goswami tried to move the car away, they threw some liquid-filled bottles and again tried to break the windows, he said, adding that he then changed direction of his car and drove away to his building.
His security personnel caught the two men, Goswami said, claiming that they were members of the Youth Congress. “They had tailed me and they were given information by higher-ups to attack me,” Goswami said. “I want to tell you Sonia Gandhi, you are the biggest coward in the country right now. You have no guts to face me. I will hold you personally responsible for any consequences of any attack on me. If anything were to happen to me, it is Sonia Gandhi who is responsible.” He added that the [Robert] Vadra family would also be held responsible.
The alleged attack came days after Goswami launched a full-blown attack on Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and claimed that she had orchestrated the Palghar lynching.
Three Mumbai residents, who were on their way to Silvassa on April 16, were lynched by local residents in Gadakchinchale village of Palghar district on the suspicion that they were thieves. The men who were lynched were reportedly Hindu religious leaders.
Would Sonia Gandhi have been quiet if Muslim preachers or Christian saints had been killed instead of Hindu sants?” Goswami asked in Hindi on his show. “She’s quiet today, but I think she feels happy that Hindu saints were killed in a state where Congress has a stake in the government. She will send a report to Italy about the fact that she is getting Hindu sants killed in Maharashtra.”
Several complaints have reportedly been filed against Goswami in many parts of the country.
Though several people have tried to give the incident a communal angle, Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Wednesday shared the list of 101 people taken into custody in connection with the lynching, and said none of those arrested were Muslim.
Responding to the allegations put by Arnab, Chief Ministers of Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, Mr. Bhupesh Baghel and Mr. Ashok Gehlot respectively have condemned his statement on Sonia Gandhi. The veteran Congress leader of Rajasthan also demanded that Mr. Rajeev Chandrashekhar must sack the journalist for the kind of journalism he has been pursuing.