Who Is Madhu Kishwar? Scholar Booked for Allegedly Spreading Misinformation

Academic Madhu Kishwar and four other people have been booked by the Uttar Pradesh police for allegedly "posting a rumour with the purpose of agitating a community" after she shared a video of a 2017 event on social media.

The police stated in a statement on Sunday that the investigation was filed as a result of a viral video shared by Kishwar and four others that claimed a Muslim man had been run over in Deoband town by a vehicle carrying Kanwariyas, aka devotees, on the yearly Hindu pilgrimage known as the Kanwar Yatra. According to the video, the Kanwariyas were arrested for purposefully running over the Muslims.

According to Scroll.in, the Saharanpur Police released a statement confirming that the incident occurred in 2017 and that appropriate action had been taken. The police criticised the video as being false and misleading and requested users of social media to remove the posts.  According to the report, Kishwar and the other four did not delete the post. Anil Mansingka, Raj Kamal, Shudha Shukla, and one other person have all been identified as the other four social media users.

Kishwar and the others have been charged with violating Sections 66(D) of the Information Technology Act and Section 505(2) of the Indian Penal Code (publishing or disseminating a rumour with the intent of provoking a class or community).

Suggested Reading: This Kerala Woman Passionate About Driving Gives Free Bus Service

This was not the first time Kishwar made a controversial post. Here's everything we know about Madhu Kishwar.

Who is Madhu Kishwar:

-  Madhu Kishwar is a commentator and professor from India. She is currently employed by the Indian Council of Social Science Research as a chair professor.

- In 1985, she received the Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Media person.

- She held the positions of professor and senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) until her retirement in 2016.

- She then became a Maulana Azad Professor at the Indian Council of Social Science Research.
- She was appointed to the Jawaharlal Nehru University School of Art and Aesthetics Academic Council in 2017.

- Kishwar co-founded Manushi, a renowned publication in the field of women's studies in India, with Ruth Vanita.
-Media organisations have accused Kishwar of using her Twitter profile to spread false information on several occasions and to assist in the dissemination of allegedly communal material.

- Kishwar reportedly uploaded another post that targeted the Muslim community in April before deleting it. She claimed that Muslim men are able to entice Hindu, Christian, and Sikh women because of their "sexual prowess." She called Muslim males "trained stud bulls" and renamed the unverified "love jihad" as "sex jihad," according to Alt News, a website that debunks fake news. According to the article, she deleted the tweet after receiving a lot of backlash.

- She tweeted about a Gurugram school bus attack in 2018 and identified five random Muslims as the perpetrators. Alt News discovered factual errors in this post. More posts shared by Kishwar that were discovered to be inaccurate and misleading were listed in the report.

- She has written books like Modi, Muslims, and Media: Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat in 2014.