A post is being shared on social media claiming that journalist Deepak Chaurasia was arrested under the charges of raping a minor girl. The post shared a video showing a group of people accusing Deepak Chaurasia of ruining the life of a 9-year-old girl. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Journalist Deepak Chaurasia was recently arrested on the charges of raping a 9-year-old girl.
Fact: Lately, the POCSO court in Gurugram issued an arrest warrant against Deepak Chaurasia in a 2013 case for allegedly airing morphed and tampered videos of a 10-year-old girl and her family and linking the same to a sexual assault. A warrant of arrest was issued against Chaurasia for 03 March 2023. The arrest warrant was not issued on the charges of raping a minor girl. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
When we searched to check whether anchor Deepak Chaurasia was recently arrested on the charges of raping a minor girl, we found a tweet made by the ‘Live Law’ legal news agency regarding an arrest warrant issued against Deepak Chaurasia in a 2013 case. The ‘Live Law’ tweet states, “A court in Haryana has again issued a warrant of arrest against Journalist-News Anchor Deepak Chaurasiya (@DChaurasia2312 ) in a 2013 case for allegedly airing ‘morphed, edited & obscene’ videos of a 10-year-old girl and her family and linking the same to a sexual assault case.”
On 07 December 2023, the POCSO court in Gurugram issued a non-bailable warrant against Journalist Deepak Chaurasia after he failed to appear before the court on the day of the hearing (04 February 2023), due to a pre-scheduled interview with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. An earlier judgement and interim orders issued in this case had clearly mentioned Deepak Chaurasia as one among the 8 accused who were charge-sheeted for allegedly airing morphed and tampered video of a 10-year-old girl and linking the video to the sexual assault case against self-styled godman Asaram Bapu. An earlier arrest warrant issued against Deepak Chaurasia in this case, in November 2022, can be seen here.
The petitioner in the FIR accused journalists Deepak Chaurasia, Chitra Tripathi and a few other journalists from ‘India News TV’ and ‘News Nation’ of airing a tampered and distorted video of his 10-year-old niece. The petitioner accused these news channels and journalists of projecting his niece in an obscene and vulgar manner and of misreporting his wife as an immoral sex trafficker named Shilpi. The petitioner did not accuse Deepak Chaurasia of raping his 10-year-old niece. Deepak Chaurasia is not yet arrested and is still running ‘Kasam Samvidhan Ki’ show on ‘Zee News’ channel.
To sum it up, the Gurugram POCSO court issued an arrest warrant against Deepak Chaurasia on the charges of airing doctored videos of a minor girl, not on the charges of raping a 9-year-old girl.
