“They beat him up,” she told CNN News18, referring to Arvind. “His mouth was bleeding…Even Saurabh was heckled by these men. He was beaten up. I was surrounded by these men. They kept asking us for our religious credentials…We had to fold our hands in front of them. We had to plead for several minutes to let us go.”

Ismat Ara, freelance journalist

Ara, writing in Firstpost, recounted her terrifying experience reporting at Maujpur on Tuesday. She saw a Hindu priest instructing a group of men “to beat Muslims as an order had come from the top”. When she inquired about the priest, the group became suspicious of her, and asked for her identity. She’d to fake her religious background, hide her press card and dodge the question with a cooked-up answer.

But later, as Ara went inside one of the lanes, she was followed by some of the men from the group. She was stopped and asked, "Media se ho toh bolo na. Jhoot bolke humare pundit jee ke baare me kyun pooch rahi ho?” Tell us if you are from the media. Why are you lying and asking about our priest?

A verbal spat ensued.

She was stopped a few more times by different men from the same group. “Those who had blocked the roads were carrying bricks, bats, lathis, sticks, rods, and axes,” she wrote. “On the roads of Maujpur, with no police or CRPF around and a charged-up mob, I was scared they would catch and harass me for being a journalist, molest me for being a girl, and lynch me for being a Muslim if they found out my identity.”

Shivnarayan Rajpurohit, Indian Express

He was confronted by a mob at West Karawal Nagar on Monday. The mob assaulted him, snatched his phone and smashed his spectacles. His diary was taken away and thrown into a burning heap of bakery items. At different points, he was followed and surrounded by three different mobs.

“A man, seemingly in his 50s, removed my spectacles, stepped on them and slapped me twice for ‘reporting from a Hindu-dominated area’,” he wrote in the newspaper. “They checked my press card. ‘Shivnarayan Rajpurohit, hmm. Hindu ho? Bach gaye.’ Not satisfied, they wanted more proof whether I was a real Hindu. ‘Bolo Jai Shri Ram’. I was silent.”

Then, another group of people came after him. “They ordered me to run for my life. ‘Ek aur bheed aa rahi hai aapke liye (Another crowd is coming for you),’ one of them said. Shaking, I scampered to my bike. I rummaged my bag for the bike key. Every minute was precious. ‘Jaldi karo. Wo log chodenge nahi,’ said one of the men from the crowd. Finally, I found the key, and blindly set off through unknown lanes to the safety of Pushta Road,” he wrote.

Vijayta Lalwani, Scroll

In an article for Scroll , she described how a group of men stood chanting “Jai Shri Ram” and “Bharat Mata Ki Jai”. They warned journalists not to take photos or videos. Some in the mob even threatened to target the reporters.

Tanushree Pandey, India Today

She was threatened and harassed by a mob in the Maujpur area on Monday.