19 June, 2020: Standing in solidarity with Scroll.in Executive Editor Supriya Sharma, the Indian Journalists Union is both shocked and anguished at the registration of First Information Report (FIR) against her by the Uttar Pradesh police over her reportage on effects of lockdown in Prime Minister Modi’s constituency. Scroll.in has stood by the article. The IJU views the FIR as yet another blatant misuse of law to intimidate and silence journalists, and in this case a recipient of prestigious Chameli Devi Jain award for Outstanding Woman Journalist as well as Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism award.
While demanding that the FIR, which also includes sections related to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, against her and Editor Naresh Fernandes be withdrawn, the IJU said there appears a sinister design to silence the voice of criticism. The article ‘In Varanasi village adopted by Prime Minister Modi, people went hungry during the lockdown’ appeared on 8 June and the FIR was lodged on June 13, and that too by a woman who was not only quoted but was also in the photograph in the article.
In a statement, IJU President Geetartha Pathak and Secretary General Sabina Inderjit said not only are the sections of SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, applied non-bailable and a clear misuse along with other IPC sections, but that the filing of the FIR at Varanasi’s Rampur police station, by Mala Devi is itself questionable. Given the police raj in UP and the increasing number of FIRs being registered against journalists there, the IJU fears the woman could have been coerced to file the FIR. More so, as the article was a revelation of how people in none other than PM’s constituency were going hungry during the lockdown.
The union cautioned both the State and Central government to stop hounding journalists as such intimidation through misuse of law was an attack on independent and free press and that repeated incidents of FIRs amounted to an undeclared censorship in the worlds’ largest democracy.
