The two arrested women journalists who are now granted bail
By Nava Thakuria
Guwahati: Indian Journalists Union (IJU) today expressed shock over the brutal murder of a young scribe in Bihar and demanded a thorough probe into the incident that led to the untimely demise of Buddhinath Jha.The IJU as well as the Delhi Union of Journalists and BrihanMumbai Union of Journalists also raised voices for discarding all legal procedures against two female journalists by the Tripura government in Agartala.
The 22-year-old Madhubani-based scribe and a Right to Information activist was found dead on 12 November after he went missing for some days. Buddhinath (also known as Avinash Jha) used to report on many fake medical clinics operating in his locality. He was initially offered some money by the illegal clinic owners, but when he did not respond, they started threatening him of dire consequence.
Meanwhile, two Delhi-based reporters namely Samriddhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha, who were arrested by Tripura police, lately got bail from a local court. They were detained by Assam police in Karimganj locality following the request of their counterpart in Tripura. They came to Tripura to cover the communal violence that erupted in the Bangladesh bordering State. They were on their way to come out of Tripura by road on Sunday and planned to reach Silchar.
“We warned in an earlier occasion also that the Tripura government was intimidating a number of social media users including journalists under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. But slapping brutal laws against the opposition voices will not serve the purpose and it would only aggravate the situation,” said IJU president K. Sreenivas Reddy and secretary general Balwinder Singh Jammu.
Tripura police claimed that the visiting reporters posted ‘fake’ inputs regarding the burning of a mosque in Gomati district a few days back and an FIR was lodged against them. Earlier the State police booked four Delhi-based lawyers under UAPA for ‘spreading’ hatred among various communities. Till date 102 individuals have been booked under the UAPA provisions by the authority as a precautionary measure.
The BUJ and DUJ too condemned the arrest of Samriddhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha, two journalists from HW News Network, by Tripura police on November 14, 2021, and welcomed the grant of bail to the two women journalists. However, both the BUJ and DUJ demanded that all cases foisted on journalists and civil society activists for their reportage or social media posts be withdrawn forthwith, and that the “intimidatory tactics by Tripura police must stop”.
In a joint statement, the BUJ and DUJ said that the arrest of the two journalists was conducted in a highly irregular and legally questionable manner. The statement noted that the journalists had tweeted earlier in the day that they were proceeding to Silchar in Assam to take a return flight to Delhi when they were stopped by Assam police, ostensibly on the directions of Tripura police, and lodged in Nilam Bazaar police station in Karimganj district of Assam. After protests from local journalists and lawyers that there were no arrest warrants, they were not furnished with copies of FIRs nor were they any women police officers present, they were initially shifted to a night shelter home and taken by Tripura police by road to Gomati district by road at 1 a.m. on November 15, 2021.
The journalists were earlier picked up in connection with an FIR lodged against their reportage on the alleged burning of a mosque in Pal Bazaar in Fatikroy in Unakoti district. Police said that, in their tweets and videos of victims of violence, they made false allegations that the Quran was burnt in a mosque. An FIR, lodged on the complaint of a local Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Kanchan Das, alleged that they had sought to ‘create hatred between religious groups by false fabrication, concealing documents etc”.
Also read: Journalist’s death in Bihar draws international concerns
The journalists have been charged under IPC sections120 (B) (punishment for criminal conspiracy), 153(A) (offence of promoting disharmony, enmity or feelings of hatred between different groups on the grounds of religion) and 504 (intentional insult).
“It is clear that police in Tripura have unleashed a concerted attack on all independent attempts to investigate and comment on the outbreak of communal violence in the state on Oct 26, 2021. The arrest of the two journalists follows the lodging of FIRs on November 4 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, for promoting enmity between groups, forgery and provoking breach of peace against a team of lawyers, led by Supreme Court advocate Ehtesham Hashmi, and comprising members of Lawyers for Democracy, People’s Union for Civil Liberties and National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations, who were part of a fact-finding team to investigate the outbreak of violence.
Barely two days later, the joint statement pointed out, Tripura police filed charges under the UAPA against 102 social media accounts including those of journalists. Newsclick’s senior editor Shyam Meera Singh, Maktoob Media’s Meer
Faisal, freelance journalists Sartaj Alam and Arif Shah and London-based monthly newspaper Byline Times’s global correspondent C.J. Werleman were among those charged. Police wrote to Twitter to block their accounts for, as Shyam Meera Singh said, merely writing three words: “Tripura is burning”.
“The jittery action of the Tripura police to censor and silence information from the ground bodes ill for a democracy. These efforts to curb the freedom of journalists to collect and disseminate information must be stiffly resisted. All over the country, we are witnessing brutal attempts to criminalise journalists who are engaged in the pursuit of their legitimate professional duties. Journalists Aasif Sultan and Siddique Kappan continue under incarceration since August 2018 and October 2020 respectively,” it stated.
In the last year alone, at least fifty journalists have been arrested, face FIRs or have been assaulted for their reportage. The statement claimed there had been a sustained assault on the rights of the media to report independently, without fear or favour. “Independent news media houses are raided and their journalists face criminal charges. Journalists are weakened by mass retrenchments and layoffs. A blatantly partisan media pushes a selective and hate-driven agenda,” the statement said.
– with inputs from global bihari bureau
