20 OUTLOOK 1 July 2019
PEN PRISON
over the issue, saying press freedom is
under threat. The irony, however, is hard
to miss here. Recently, Prashant Kanojia,
a Delhi-based journalist, was picked up
by the Uttar Pradesh police from his
home in the capital after he posted a
news channel’s video taking a jibe at CM
Yogi Adityanath on Twitter. Kanojia got
respite only when a Supreme Court
bench ordered his release on bail on
June 13, the same day that Sharma was
picked up in Chhattisgarh. “This order is
passed in view of the excessiveness of
the action taken (against Kanojia),” the
bench had noted.W
ITH Kanojia’s case, the crack-
down on jounalists, which is
more common a phenomenon
for reporters operating from
states, was brought to Delhi. Nation Live,
the news channel that aired the clip—that
Kanojia had relayed in his tweet—has also
borne the brunt. Between June 6 and 8,
UP police arrested three people from the
channel on charges of defaming the CM,
while PTI reported that its office in Noida
had been sealed for operating without a
licence. The PTI report had been denied
in a video posted by the channel’s head
Ajay Shah, apparently in hiding, on
Facebook. Phone calls to the channel’s
office have gone unanswered.
If a small media enterprise from Noida
is easily muzzled, scribes in Kashmir can
be shut down indefinitely. Aasif Sultan
has been in jail since August 27, 2018. In
2018, Sultan had re-visited the story of
Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan
Wani in a piece titled ‘The Rise of Burhan’
for the magazine Kashmir Narrator. It
was for this piece, says Showkat Motta,
the magazine’s editor, that Sultan was
picked up by the J&K police.
“I said this on the first day and I’ll say it
again, these are cooked up charges bec-
ause of his story and his journalism,”
Motta tells Outlook. He says that it took
Sultan three months to investigate the
story. “It is a monthly magazine and, if
you come out with something on Burhan
after two years, it has to be an exclusive,”
he says. The details of the article, accord-
ing to Motta, led the police to believe that
Sultan was “linked to militants”.
Sultan was picked up on charges of
“criminal conspiracy” and “harbouring
militants”. On June 1, a Kashmir court
asked the police to record their state-
ments in the case. “So far they have notcome out with incriminating evidence.
Where is it?” asks Motta. Out of the 10
witnesses in the case, “two are constables
and, when the court issued summons last
time, they did not appear,” he adds.
Motta says the warning signs were
there. On July 11, 2018, he received an
e-mail titled ‘Publication of content
glamourising terrorism in the state’
from an unverified e-mail id. The mail
listed 10 qualms about the story. “They
want the message to go out that he is not
in jail because of his journalism, while
the truth is that he is in jail only because
of his journalism,” says Motta.
International press organisations have
called for Sultan’s release and condemned
the arrest. In April this year, India was
ranked 140 out of 180 countries in the
press freedom index released by
Reporters Without Borders. According to
data from the Committee to Protect
Journalists, 28 journalists have been
killed in India since 2018.
“When you’re offended and annoyed by
a story, there is a legal course if you feel
your image has been tarnished. There are
sections under the law that do not include
in their ambit direct police action. There
are other enforcing agents or authorities,”
says Vishweshwar Bhat, editor of
Vishwavani, a Kannada daily.
Late last month, the Karnataka police
filed an FIR charging Bhat with defama-
tion, forgery, intimidation and breach of
trust. On May 25, a day after the election
results, his daily published a story saying
that an inebriated Nikhil Kumaraswamy
told off his grandfather H.D. Deve Gowda
at a Mysore hotel, saying he did not do
enough to ensure his victory.
According to him, the government bec-
ame wary and did not arrest him after
#EmergencyInKarnataka started trend-
ing on Twitter. “Otherwise they would
have arrested me,” he says.
In Bhat’s case, as is in many cases
including Kanojia’s, the person whose
image has apparently been tarnished did
not file the case. “The victim or affected
party should file the complaint, not
anyone else. Here, the JD(S) worker filed
the complaint,” he adds.
After Kanojia’s arrest, the Editors Guild
of India had released a statement con-
demning the act and asking for defama-
tion to be decriminalised, a stand that
Bhat supports too. However, it’s not just a
defamation charge that journalists have
to deal with, as Aasif ’s case illustrates. OIn April this year, India
was ranked 140 out of
180 countries in the
press freedom index
released by Reporters
without Borders.l August 27, 2018: Kashmiri journalist
Aasif Sultan was imprisoned for
allegedly ‘harbouring terrorists’. He is
still languishing in jail.
l June 6-8: Three people were arrested
from Nation Live, the news channel that
aired a clip taking a jibe at UP CM Yogi
Adityanath. Delhi-based journalist
Prashant Kanojia was also arrested for
tweeting the clip.
l June 13: Chhattisgarh journalist Dilip
Kumar Sharma was picked up for report-
ing that 50 villages in the state were
facing a power cut for two days.ARRESTING TIMESKashmir Narrator’s Aasif
Sultan (top); Journalist
Prashant Kanojia (above)PTIKASHMIR NARRATOR