BJP’s Tejasvi Surya, editors of Kannada news portals booked over ‘fake news’ on farmer’s death over Waqf notice

Apart from Bangalore South MP Tejasvi Surya – who is part of the 31-member Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Waqf Amendment Bill 2024 – the Haveri CEN police have also booked editors of the news portals Kannada Dunia and Kannada News e-paper.

The FIR under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Section 353(2) for promoting enmity between communities through false statements was registered following a complaint by police constable Sunil Huchanavar, who is part of the social media monitoring unit of the Haveri police.

According to the complaint, on November 7, the BJP MP posted a message on social media stating, “A farmer in Haveri commits suicide after finding his land is taken over by Waqf!, In their haste to appease minorities, CM @siddaramaiah and minister @BZZameer AhmedK have unleashed catastrophic effects in Karnataka that are becoming impossible to contain with every passing day.”

The MP’s social media post referred to fake reports in the news portal Kannada Dunia e-paper and Kannada News e-paper which claimed that “a farmer committed suicide because of Waqf claims on his land,” the police complaint alleged.

According to the complaint, the reports said that a farmer named Rudrappa of Haranagi village in Haveri district died by suicide after four acres of his land were identified by the state authorities as belonging to the Waqf board. The news reports also claimed farmers were protesting against notices issued in the name of Waqf board as a consequence.

“When a fact check was conducted by the social media unit of the police into the claims made by the BJP MP and the Kannada online news portals, it was found that the farmer had committed suicide in January 2022 due to huge loans and inability to repay the debts and a case was registered in the Adoor police station in Haveri on January 06, 2022,” the police complaint against Surya and others stated.

News of the death in 2022 – which was investigated and closed – has been falsely projected as a recent incident to foment trouble among farmers, it is alleged.

“My complaint is to take appropriate legal action against BJP MP Tejasvi Surya who posted fake news on his ‘X’ account @tejasvi_surya without verifying the authenticity of the above news and the editors of Kannada Dunia e-paper and Kannada News e-paper who spread the fake news,” says the complaint from the social media monitoring unit of the Haveri police.

Tejasvi Surya has been at the forefront of a BJP campaign in Karnataka to suggest that claims over land identified as Waqf properties are part of a “land jihad” being perpetrated by Muslims with the support of the ruling Congress party in the state.

The news of the farmer’s death in Haveri came at a time when BJP MP Jagadambika Pal, the chairman of the JPC on the Waqf Amendment Bill, was in nearby Hubbali on Thursday to hear grievances of farmers who claimed to have received notices for being in occupation of Waqf land.

The Congress government in Karnataka has, meanwhile, accused the BJP of attempting to create communal unrest by enacting a drama around civil land disputes in the state.