Mumbai man held, scribe booked for Bandra trouble
Mumbai, April 15
Left red-faced after more than 1,000 migrant workers held a protest at Bandra on Tuesday, the authorities in Maharashtra arrested a Navi Mumbai resident, Vinay Dubey, for offensive social media posts and booked a TV journalist for a ‘false’ news report.
Dubey was arrested for posting messages on the social media which allegedly led to hundreds of migrant workers, stuck in Mumbai due to the lockdown, gathering near the Bandra railway station, the police said. Dubey had uploaded a video in which he demanded that the Maharashtra Government make travel arrangements for migrants. He had called for a nation-wide protest if trains were not arranged by April 18 to ferry the migrants home. Also, an FIR has been filed against a TV journalist over his report that trains would resume services which may have prompted the gathering at Bandra, another official said.
Maharashtra minister Ashok Chavan called it an attempt to disrupt communal harmony. At a press meet in New Delhi, he cited a letter of South Central Railways for starting special trains to transport migrant labourers that might have triggered the gathering at Bandra. PTI
