Ghaziabad: A journalist who has been reporting on a Ram Mandir donation scam alleged on Saturday that police registered a road rage case against him as an act of retaliation, sent officers to his home late at night in his absence and towed his car without notice.Abhishek Upadhyay, who runs the YouTube channel Top Secret, said on Aug 18 a motorcyclist brushed against his car near Shipra Mall as he was returning home after picking up his daughter from school. Both parties went to the Shipra Suncity police chowki, where Upadhyay said an officer asked him to file a cross complaint. He declined, saying it had been a minor brush, and left.On Aug 20, around 10.30 pm, seven to eight police personnel allegedly arrived at his residence when Upadhyay was not home. “A bunch of cops reached my home and, in my absence, barged into the house. When my wife asked them to step out, they didn’t,” he told TOI. The chowki in charge called him to say an FIR had been registered against him for alleged road rage. When he asked for the FIR details, he said, police declined.The following day, he said, police came to his housing society and towed his car without informing him. He said he had CCTV footage of the incident and raised concerns about possible tampering with or planting of evidence in the vehicle.When Upadhyay requested a copy of the FIR, he said he received a document on WhatsApp at around 2.45 am that contained no sections of law or details of the alleged incident. He said that when he pressed for the complete FIR, police sent him paperwork relating to a 2025 case connected to his reporting on the killing of a NEET student in Gorakhpur.“I fear that as I enter UP, they will arrest me and put me behind bars,” Upadhyay said, adding that he had not returned home since the FIR was filed. He called on police to release CCTV footage from near the incident spot.The complainant, Nikki Gautam, stated that Upadhyay’s Baleno car struck his Splendor motorcycle from behind near Shipra Mall. Gautam alleged that Upadhyay stepped out, abused him, threatened to kill him and, after learning his name, made caste-related remarks.Police said officers went to Upadhyay’s residence to summon him for investigation, not to harass him. A senior officer said Upadhyay could obtain the FIR copy by appearing at the police station or through the judiciary. Cops from Indirapuram police station did not respond separately to the allegations about the late-night visit and vehicle seizure.Upadhyay maintained that the sequence of events was intended to intimidate him and was directly linked to his coverage of the Ram Mandir donation scam.
