“I’ll speak out even if I come out of this. And today, tomorrow, or a year later — I will come out of this for sure.”

Few weeks before his arrest, #UmarKhalid spoke to @sighyush on Delhi Police's narrative hunting and the media campaign against him. https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/09/14/there-will-be-fake-stories-about-me-once-im-arrested-umar-khalid-on-riots-probe-and-his-imminent-arrest

The activist said that he had reconciled himself with a police witch-hunt in March. “After Malviya’s video, and the right-wing media’s campaign, I was expecting to be questioned. I was mentally prepared to be arrested back in March and April,” he said.

Amit Malviya tweeted a selectively clipped video of Umar's speech in Amravati. BJP attack dogs like Opindia, Zee, Republic and Times Now joined in. Sample the headlines/tickers: “Lens on Tukde Poster Boy”, “On Tape: How Lobby Planned Violence”, “Tukde Link To Delhi Danga”

A day after Malviya’s tweet, TOI published a strikingly one-sided report which claimed that Khalid was “under the scanner of intelligence agencies” for the speech. The IT cell head’s selectively trimmed clip was quoted in Hindustan Times and India Today without challenge.

As @newslaundry reported last week, Zee — and often the Print & ANI — packaged legally inadmissible disclosure statements as “confessions” of former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain, Jamia and DU students. https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/09/11/how-zee-news-is-trying-to-prejudice-the-delhi-riots-trials

“They don’t have any evidence against me. They have to invent the evidence,” says Umar Khalid, who believes that the police are trying to mould public opinion against critics of Modi.

“I am sure that when I am arrested, there will be fake stories about me in the press."