Tejasvi booked for ‘fake news’ on farmer suicide

Haveri district police on Friday filed a first information report against Tejasvi Surya, Member of Parliament from the Bharatiya Janata Party representing Bengaluru South, and editors of two Kannada online news portals, accusing them of “circulating misinformation”. On Friday, the FIR was filed by the Cybercrime, Economic, and Narcotic Offences police of Haveri following a complaint from Sunil Huchannavar, a constable in the social media monitoring cell at the Haveri SP office Surya had recently claimed on social media that a farmer in Haveri died by suicide as his land was being taken over by the Waqf Board, attributing the alleged incident to minority appeasement by the Karnataka government. On Friday, the FIR was filed by the Cybercrime, Economic, and Narcotic Offences police of Haveri following a complaint from Sunil Huchannavar, a constable in the social media monitoring cell at the Haveri SP office. Given the rampant amount of Waqf conversion notices to 1000s of farmers across the state, one is easily led to believe such outcomes.” However, hours later, he again said in a post: “Yesterday when I tweeted about Farmer’s suicide in Haveri due to Waqf land grab, he got the Haveri Police to register a false case, accusing me of spreading misinformation.