Indian National Mazhar Farooqui had worked for Hindustan Times in Lucknow before moving to Gulf News in Dubai.
Recipient of several awards for his investigative reports, Farooqui finds himself in the crosshair of BJP’s IT Cell, possibly because he had exposed several cases of fraud by Indian businessmen.
He had also busted a job racket by an India based agency, which allegedly charged a hefty fees for arranging fake job interviews in the Gulf.
Farooqui, Features Editor looking after Special Reports, claims he was inundated with abusive and threatening messages forwarded to his mail, on WhatsApp, on Facebook Messenger and on Twitter.
He also claimed that while some of the accounts have been deactivated and some tweets deleted, several threats were issued from verified accounts and by people followed by the Indian Prime Minister.
An Indian journalist working with Gulf News at Dubai, has been threatened that his passport would be impounded and he would be arrested as and when he returned to India.
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He had apparently written reports exposing Islamophobic social media posts by Indian expatriates working in UAE and Gulf countries. He also found equally neutral when come to say no to hate speech and reported Abu dhabi court incident in his microblog
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[splco_label]Few threats were explicit and it been summed up as slide shots for viewers to arrive at conclusion[/splco_label]
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Messages and complaints were also sent to UAE authorities and police in Dubai, asking whether they had carried out a thorough background check on Farooqui, who, they said, was a Shia Muslim from Lucknow and was working secretly for Iran.
Farooqui retorted “Well, it’s like a pandemic I have got nearly 5,000 messages via email, FB messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp from hundreds of such people. . But after abusive messages many have deactivated their accounts or deleted their posts for fearing action.”
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“In the midst of all this, BJP’s IT cell has launched a relentless, malicious campaign against me on Twitter. People with verified account and many followed by the PM are abusing me and threatening to revoke my passport and harm me and my daughters. They have even posted their pix on social media…”.
Input feeds : NationalHerald & Social media
