The News Broadcasting & Digital Standards Authority (NBDSA) has imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on Zee News for its coverage of a student-led protest at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in August last year.
Over a year after a complaint was registered, an order was passed on September 11 by the Authority, chaired by former Supreme Court judge Justice A K Sikri, maintaining that the Zee News coverage violated the broadcasting code of conduct.
As per the order, the broadcasts were found to misrepresent the complainant’s speech during the protest through inflammatory language and defamatory visual elements. The order directed the broadcaster to remove the impugned content from all platforms, and to notify their compliance in writing within the next seven days.
On August 16, 2025, Zee News aired multiple segments highlighting that certain students from AMU had raised pro-Palestine and religious slogans during the protest on campus. The broadcast presented these slogans as evidence of anti-national activity while invoking a communal angle, villanising students from the Muslim community.
The complainant, Talha Mannan — a PhD scholar at Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad National Urdu University — submitted that Zee News had singled out around 10-15 seconds of sloganeering at the end of an 18-minute speech he had delivered on August 12, 2025, at the AMU campus as part of the protest which was ongoing for weeks.
Mannan, in his capacity as an AMU alumnus and the national secretary of Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO), had participated in the almost three-week-long student protest against various issues, including tuition-fee hike. Eventually, the AMU administration accepted the students’ demands, leading to a peaceful conclusion of the protest. The success of the students’ movement, the complainant submitted, validated the legitimacy of the students’ grievances and the peaceful manner in which the protest was held.
Mannan highlighted that the Zee News segments were broadcast four days later with no context, solely focusing on the Palestine-related slogans in an inflammatory manner while completely ignoring the root cause of the protest, purportedly painting the whole agitation as being organised against the war against Palestine.
“This selective and delayed coverage, which in itself raise many questions about the motivation of the broadcast, demonstrated a calculated editorial decision to prioritise sensationalism over factual reporting, despite having sufficient time and resources to provide comprehensive and balanced coverage,” noted the complainant in his submission.
On August 18, 2025, two days after the contentious segments were broadcast by Zee News, a Hindu Raksha Dal leader filed an FIR against Mannan and nine other unidentified students.
‘Yogi Style Treatement For Palestine Loving Gang’
The first of the impugned segments, 4:34-minute long, aired on August 16, 2025 as part of the prime-time news analysis show “Deshhit” on the channel with the title “AMU में ‘फिलिस्तीन प्रेमी गैंग’…’योगी स्टाइल’ में होगा इलाज! । Palestine logans।” (AMU’s ‘Palestine loving gang’…they will be given ‘Yogi style’ treatment!) The following day, it was also uploaded on Zee News’ YouTube channel.
During this broadcast, students were labelled “अराजक तत्व” (anarchist elements) and villainised for voicing support for Palestine, through associations with extremism and terrorism.
Further, the narrator’s statements implied that expressions of solidarity with Palestine could be construed as a pattern of raising issues that indicates criminal intent and extremism being cultivated in minority educational institutions like AMU. He had said: “कभी जिन्ना की तस्वीर, कभी होली खेलने का विवाद और अब यूनिवर्सिटी कैंपस में फ़िलस्तीन के समर्थन में नारे। कौन है जो अलीगढ़ मुस्लिम यूनिवर्सिटी को बनाना चाहता है, इस्लामी कट्टरपंथ का सेंटर” (Sometimes it’s Jinnah’s portrait, sometimes a controversy over playing Holi, and now slogans in support of Palestine on a university campus. Who is it that wants to turn Aligarh Muslim University into a center of Islamic extremism?)
The complainant submitted that the slogan, which comprises constitutionally protected free speech, was meant to express solidarity with oppressed people across the world without any reference to a particular group or political party. However, the narrator insinuated that expressing support for Palestinians meant condoning terrorism. He said: “ये कौन लोग हैं जिनके सीने में हमास का दर्द पनपता है? ये कौन लोग हैं जिनका जख्म बार-बार छलकता है?” (Who are these people who carry the pain of Hamas in their hearts? Who are these people whose wounds keep spilling over again and again?).
The second impugned content was a 4:09-minute segment broadcast by Zee News, titled “Breaking News: AMU में ‘फिलिस्तीन प्रेमी गैंग’ ‘योगी स्टाइल’ में होगा ईलाज!” (AMU’s ‘Palestine loving gang’ will be given ‘Yogi style’ treatment).
The second segment took recourse to the same 10-15 second footage, containing the slogan used in the protest speech: “AMU का मतलब क्या, ला इलाहा इल्लल्लाह” (What does AMU mean? There is no god but Allah). The students also raised slogans like “गाज़ा से है रिश्ता क्या, ला इलाहा इल्लल्लाह” (What is the relation with Gaza? There is no god but Allah).
Moreover, the segments displayed tickers such as “AMU में फ़िलस्तीन प्रेमी गैंग एक्टिव” (Palestine loving gang active in AMU) and again, “योगी स्टाइल में होगा इलाज” (They will be given Yogi style treatment). While the first statement brands a group of students as a “gang” and associates them with Palestine for simply raising slogans in solidarity with their cause, the second statement can be perceived as a direct threat, by referring to the strongman approach associated with the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister.
Click to view slideshow.‘Spreading Ideological Pollution’
The third impugned segment was aired on Zee News as part of its show DNA (Daily News and Analysis) on the same date. It was titled “DNA: फीस माफी वाले आंदोलन में फिलिस्तीन जिंदाबाद कहां से आ गया? Aligarh Muslim University Zee News” (Where did Long live Palestine come from in a protest demanding a fee waiver?)
In this segment, the anchor opened with the statement: “अलीगढ़ यूनिवर्सिटी जो अक्सर विवादों में रहती है… इस बार अलीगढ़ यूनिवर्सिटी के कुछ छात्रों की निष्ठा फ़िलस्तीन प्रेम के वजह से सवालों में है । यानी सिवान से लेकर अलीगढ़ तक एक विशेष तरीके की वैचारिक प्रदूषण फैलाया जा रहा है” (Aligarh University, which often finds itself embroiled in controversies…This time, the allegiance of a few Aligarh University students is being called into question because of their love for Palestine. In other words, a particular kind of ideological pollution is being spread from Siwan to Aligarh), suggesting that students of AMU were orchestrating anti-national activity spanning across regions.
Moreover, multiple inflammatory tickers were used in this segment: “अलीगढ़ में फ़िलिस्तीन ज़िंदाबाद क्यों?” (Why ‘Long Live Palestine’ in Aligarh?), “फ़ीस माफ़ी में फ़िलिस्तीन का क्या काम?” (What does Palestine have to do with fee waivers?), and “वैचारिक प्रदूषण के कितने गढ़?” (How many bastions of ideological pollution are there?). The complainant noted that these were instrumental in creating a false narratives of systematic anti-national activities, and thus promote communal hatred.
Click to view slideshow.Zee News’ Response
Zee News maintained that all three broadcasts complied with the Code of Conduct set down by the NBDSA. It asserted that any divisive narrative and controversy stemmed from the viral video clip itself rather than Zee News’ reporting on August 16. Specifically, the broadcaster submitted that while pro-Palestine solidarity could be expressed neutrally, incorporating slogans like “There is no god but Allah” introduced what it termed as “religious sentiments or fervour” within a tuition fee protest.
Additionally, Zee News highlighted that an FIR had been registered against the complainant and noted that he was not currently an AMU student. It rejected allegations that its coverage caused the police action, contending the clip was already viral on social media before it was broadcast by them. It must be noted here that the actual speech at the end of which the slogan was raised by the protesting students took place on August 12.
The NBDSA Order
Upon considering the complaint, the relevant footage, as well as the submissions made by both parties, NBDSA came to the conclusion that Zee News had selectively distorted the event, omitting the primary cause of the agitation — a campus fee hike. By selectively broadcasting a brief snippet of a slogan, bereft of any context, the channel misleadingly portrayed the entire demonstration as being about the war against Palestinian.
Moreover, the Authority highlighted that the channel had committed severe breaches of the Code of Conduct, by misrepresenting the context in which the contentious slogan was raised. Besides, inflammatory commentary was broadcast on air, specifically noting that invoking ‘Yogi-like treatment’ was provocative, and appeared to incite criminal action on the protesters rather than deliver objective news about the fee hike.
Zee News: A Repeat Offender
This is not the first time Zee News was pulled up by NBDSA for ‘inflammatory’ reporting. In October 2025, the regulatory body had come down heavily on Zee News and Times Now Navbharat over reports on ‘Mehendi Jihad’ and ‘Love Jihad’, respectively. It directed Zee News to remove four video reports from its website and YouTube channel within seven days. In another order, it asked Times Now Navbharat to remove objectionable tickers from its reportage.
More recently, in February this year, a penalty of Rs 1 lakh was imposed on Zee News for a report that falsely claimed that a truck driver offering namaz atop his vehicle had caused traffic jam on the Srinagar Jammu Highway. In its order, NBDSA had also issued a set of guidelines to media outlets for doing stories based on information available on social media. On March 3, 2025, a segment in Zee News programme DNA featured headlines like “Truck par namaz, highway kiya jam” and claimed that the driver stopped in the middle of the highway without regard for others, blocking one side while the opposite side remained clear for vehicular movement. Citing Alt News’s fact-check report, complainants pointed out to NBDSA that Zee News had aired an unverified video, violating accuracy standards and religious stereotyping guidelines, among others.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.
Prantik Ali | Radio Free (2026-09-15T02:36:52+00:00) Zee News fined ₹2 lakh for ‘inflammatory’ AMU protest coverage, asked to pull down content within seven days. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2026/09/15/zee-news-fined-%e2%82%b92-lakh-for-inflammatory-amu-protest-coverage-asked-to-pull-down-content-within-seven-days/
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