An FIR was filed against journalist Rana Ayyub on Tuesday in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad city for her fundraising campaigns for Covid-19 and flood relief work.
The FIR, which has been filed by a group named ‘Hindu IT Cell’, has been registered under the sections of money laundering, cheating, dishonest misappropriation of property, and criminal breach of trust.
Sanjay Pandey, SHO, told The Cognate, “An FIR has been registered against her on the complaint made by a person named Vikas. A complaint has been filed under several sections of IPC for cheating, money laundering, criminal breach of trust, black money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act.”
The FIR has alluded to three crowdfunding campaigns initiated by Ayyub between April 2020-June 2021, on the crowdfunding platform Ketto.
The three campaigns had been launched for the aid of slum dwellers and farmers, relief work for various states and help for COVID-10 impacted people.
The complainant alleged that Ayyub had illegally collected money through her crowdfunding campaigns “in the name of charity”. The complaint also alleged that the journalist had received foreign funds without the government’s approval.
Ayyub is an internationally acclaimed award-winning journalist. She is a vocal critic of the BJP and regularly writes for leading media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
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Ghazala Ahmad is the Delhi Correspondent for The Cognate.
