This story first appeared in News18

The new rules issued state that if money has been disbursed in the name of any project, and is seen utilised for any other purpose, legal action will be initiated against the culprits

In strict rules sent to all districts of Bengal on 100 days of work and other programmes, the state government has stressed on ‘zero tolerance to corruption’ as its main message.

The new rules issued by the government clearly state that if money has been disbursed in the name of the 100 days programme or any other project, and is seen utilised for any other purpose, legal action will be initiated against the culprits.

The Trinamool Congress has been working hard to clean its image. That is why National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee too is meeting every district leader and changing the leadership as and where it is required, a practice similar to what chief minister Mamata Banerjee initiated in her government.

Last Thursday, in a cabinet meeting, she warned her Ministers that they should all should have a ‘clean image’ and nobody should sign any file without rechecking it.

Along with this, new rules have been sent to all districts by the State Secretariat, in which it is clearly stated that an FIR will have to be initiated against every malpractice.

It is categorically written in the new rules that jobs provided to job card holders of Mahatma Gandhi NREGS through departmental schemes since April, 2022, should be compulsorily entered in the relevant portal by all districts.

The performance under the scheme so far has not been satisfactory, according to data, and special attention is required at Purba Bardhaman, Howrah, Uttar Dinajpur, Bankura, Coochbehar, Jhargram, Dakshin Dinjapur, Paschim Bardhaman, Birbhum.

The new rules also state, “recovery of amounts as recommended by Social Audit Unit (SAU) and closure of issues Page 2 of 3 raised by SAU to be made by 9/9/2022. Action taken against advisories and central team recommendations must be complete and proper follow up on recovery of money, FIRs, disciplinary proceedings etc. must be done.”

Now, this initiation of FIR and disciplinary action to be taken, is very interesting. Most of the panchayats are run by ruling parties and it is clear that the administration will go tough without seeing colour.

Party insiders say that now, the party and state government are very serious about corruption and a clear signal has been given; that whoever involved in any malpractice will not be spared. From 100 days work to PMAY G work, alerts have been been send to all districts.

“In case of PMAY-G Houses, those houses which received second installments 90 days back must be completed urgently. A report regarding the status of those houses must be communicated by 22-08-2022 to the state. Following districts are having higher number of incomplete houses: South 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Jhargram, Purulia, Paschim Medinipur and Uttar Dinajpur,” the government rules said.

Action suggested by NLM and advisories of government of India must be complied with, the rules said, and many districts have partially complied with respect to recovery, disciplinary action, FIRs, systemic changes etc. Proper follow up action must be taken, it said.

The Bengal government has been on a backfoot after the action against its leaders Partha Chatterjee and Anubrata Mondal in corruption cases. The Panchayat polls are also approaching and the current developments may have a cascading effect everywhere.

Link to original story

Titled ‘Release prisoners on completion of jail term, decriminalise inadvertent border crossings, especially for fisherfolk and minors‘, the statement draws attention to the death of two Indian fisherfolk in Pakistani custody this year, and the death of a Pakistani fisherman of Bengali origin in India’s custody last year.

All three had served their sentences but remained in custody on ‘the other side’. Compounding the tragedy, there are terrible delays in the repatriation of the bodies of such fisherfolk, notes the statement.

The statement also draws attention to some teenagers who remain incarcerated in juvenile centers in India, mostly without any contact with their families. One has already served his sentence but remains incarcerated. Details below – Statement text and endorsements:

03 August 2022: 

Note to media: 

This is a joint statement about cross-border prisoners initiated and coordinated by Southasia Peace – www.southasiapeace.com and endorsed by over 30 organisations around Southasia and beyond.

31 July 2022

Release prisoners on completion of jail term, decriminalise inadvertent border crossings, especially for fisherfolk and minors

Joint statement 

Kalu Vira, a fisherman from India incarcerated in Pakistan died at a hospital in Karachi on 6 July 2022. He had completed his jail term in December 2021, and his nationality had been verified. 

After his passing, it took over 10 days for the Pakistan authorities to inform the Indian High Commission about the death. 

As of 31 July, Kalu Vira’s mortal remains are yet to be repatriated. Meanwhile his family members came to learn of the tragedy through other means and are desperately awaiting the return of his mortal remains.

This is not the first time a fisherman has died while incarcerated on ‘the other side’. It typically takes well over a month to repatriate mortal remains of an Indian or a Pakistani who dies while incarcerated in the other country. The repatriation is carried out through Wagah border although most such incarcerations are in the southern coastal areas.

Nano Ram, another Indian fisherman, completed his jail sentence in Pakistan on 16 January 2019. He died at a cardiovascular hospital in Karachi on 3 February 2022. His remains were repatriated on 4 April 2022. 

Amir Hamza, a Bengali migrant fisherman from Karachi arrested by the Indian Coast Guards in 2017 died of Covid-19 in India in June 2021. It took the authorities three months to repatriate his body to Pakistan. He, too, had completed his prison sentence but was kept languishing in custody.

When fisherfolk cross the unmarked maritime borders in the region, lengthy incarceration is just one of the risks they face. Currently, Pakistan holds 632 Indian fishermen in Landhi Jail, Karachi, while India holds 95 Pakistani fishermen in prisons in Gujarat. All were arrested for inadvertently crossing the maritime boundary.

Even after serving their jail sentences, they end up remaining in prison. Had Kalu, Manu and Hamza been repatriated promptly after having completed their sentences they might have been alive today.

We note that Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi fisherfolk arrested by India and vice versa also face similar issues. 

In some cases, border patrol personnel on the other side have shot dead fisherfolk caught transgressing the unmarked maritime border. This happens between Pakistan and India, and also between Bangladesh and India.

Additionally, several minors who inadvertently crossed the border across the Line of Control in the disputed area of Kashmir, are lodged in reformatory centres on the other side. In some cases, they are repatriated within days, once their identities are verified and contact is made with families across the border.

Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi fisherfolk arrested by India and vice versa also face similar issues. In the case of Sri Lanka and India, there are generally fairly fast repatriations, sometimes within weeks of arrest, including boats being returned.. 

We call on the governments of the region to immediately take following steps:

1. Release and repatriate prisoners of each other’s country as soon as they have completed their prison sentences, particularly aged prisoners, women prisoners and civilian prisoners with minor offences. Promptly return any fishing boats that are confiscated.
2. Revive the India-Pakistan Joint Judicial Committee on Prisoners and allow medical teams of the other country to periodically visit and conduct inspections. Institute similar bilateral committees between India-Sri Lanka, and India-Bangladesh. 
3. Allow consular access to cross-border prisoners and communication between them and their relatives, including the option of online communication. 
4. Allow those who are jailed in or who die in Sindh and Gujarat to be repatriated through the sea route or Khokhrapar border rather than having to travel 1000 km up-country to Wagah-Atari border, and down again to their homes.
5. Decriminialise inadvertent border crossings. 

All countries of the region must institute measures to ameliorate the plight of the incarcerated in their custody, particularly cross-border prisoners. This will also help build confidence and trust between the two countries and improve overall neighbourly relations in the Southasian region.

Statement initiated by the Southasia Peace Action Network, Sapan, endorsed by the following organisations:

1. Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum
2. National Fishworkers Forum, India
3. National Fisheries Solidarity Movement, Sri Lanka
4. Aaghaz-e-Dosti  – https://aaghazedosti.wordpress.com/
5. Aman Ki Asha – www.amankiasha.com
6. Centre for Social Justice – Pakistan
7. Confederation of Voluntary Associations, COVA – India
8. Haqooq Khalq Party Pakistan – www.haqooqekhalq.com 
9. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan – www.hrcp-web.com
10. National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) – India
11. Nijera Kori – Bangladesh
12. Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee
13. People’s  Watch – India 
14. People for Peace and Change – India, Pakistan
15. Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, PIPFPD
16. Peace and Development Organisation – Pakistan
17. Pakistan Institute of Labour and Education Research, PILER
18. People’s Union For Civil Liberties, India
19. Southasia Peace Action Network – www.southasiapeace.com
20. South Asia Partnership-Pakistan 
21. South Asia Citizens Web – sacw.net
22. Tehrik-e-Niswan, Pakistan www.tehrik-e-niswan.org.pk
23. Boston South Asian Coalition
24. Sangat – Southasia
25. Samaaj – https://samaaj.net
26. American Alliance of Physicians for Peace in South Asia
27. International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India 
28. Uks Research Centre – Pakistan
29. Anna’s Tuin en Ruigte, Amsterdam
30.  Bebaak Collective – India
31. Driksakshi – India

The South Asian Women in Media (India) condemns the arrest of Teesta Setalvad, secretary and co-founder of Citizens for Justice and Peace, and of Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of Alt News, the fact-checking media organisation, and expresses solidarity with them. SAWM India seeks their immediate release and demands that all charges against them be dropped.

Setalvad’s arrest came hours after the Supreme Court of India dismissed a petition by Zakia Jafri, the wife of Congress parliamentarian Ehsan Jafri, who was killed in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. The petition was filed after the 2012 clean chit to then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. It sought a probe into an alleged larger conspiracy behind the riots. Setalvad was a co-petitioner in the case as a representative of the CJP, an organisation formed to seek justice for the victims of the Gujarat riots.

While dismissing their petition on June 24, the Supreme Court said the proccedings were pursued “to keep the pot boiling, obviously for ulterior design”. It also said “all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with the law”.

In an interview after the Supreme Court decision, Home Minister Amit Shah said Modi had suffered long years at the hands of opposition parties, some NGOs and “motivated elements” to clear his name.

Setalvad’s arrest followed shortly thereafter. The FIR in the case quotes heavily from the Supreme Court judgement, treating it virtually as an order for the arrest of Setalvad, former Gujarat DGP B P Sreekumar, and the already imprisoned IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt.

Also disturbing are the Supreme Court’s remarks. The nearly decade long delay in deciding the case is hardly to be blamed on the petitioners. The Court ‘s remarks bear ominous portents for those who knock on its doors with real or perceived grievances against the State.

The alacrity with which the Gujarat Police jumped to the arrest of a rights activist with over two decades of public service forms part of a disquieting chronology. The decision to dispatch officials of the state police’s anti-terror squad to Mumbai for the purpose is ominous, considering the current trend of describing all those opposed to the government as “urban Naxals” and their activities as “terrorism”.

It is in this atmosphere that police forces under BJP governments across the country appear to be waiting for the smallest opportunity to crack down on dissenters. The Delhi Police’s decision to arrest Mohammed Zubair on charges of hate speech for a tweet in 2018 in which he reproduced a poster from a 1983 Bollywood comedy film ‘Kisi Se Na Kehna‘  is strange, to say the least.

He has been arrested on the complaint of a twitter handle whose only tweet in the eight months of its existence has been to complain against Zubair.

Altnews has been providing yeoman service as a fact checking site, and Zubair is one of its pillars. In recent days, he had become the target of a social media campaign for his role in exposing the hate speech of suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.

Incidentally, Sharma, against whom too Delhi Police has registered an FIR for hate speech, has not yet been arrested and is apparently untraceable!

Both arrests, of Setalvad and Zubair, make a mockery of the G-7 Plus 4 statement on “Resilient Democracies”, that India signed on Monday after the G-7 summit in Germany.

Among other promises in the statement to advance democratic practices, India has signed on to “protecting the feedom of expression online and offline and ensuring a free and independent media landscape…”; “guarding the freedom, independence and diversity of civil society actors, speaking out against threats to civic space and respecting freedom of association and peaceful assembly”; and to “protecting freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief and promoting inter-faith dialogue”.

SAWM India believes the arrests of Setalvad and Zubair go against the letter and spirit of this statement as well as India’s own constitutional guarantees and freedoms.

Both Setalvad and Zubair must be released without delay and the charges against them withdrawn.

SAWM India calls on all other civil society groups to join in this demand for their release.

Click to register

Click for more details

Snapshots of the Event

The South Asian Women in Media (India) strongly condemns the FIR filed against senior journalist Saba Naqvi for what is purportedly a meme created by someone and which was openly shared over social media and which she had posted on her Twitter account. Naqvi has since deleted that tweet.

SAWM is of the opinion that Naqvi has clearly been unfairly singled out and targeted and therefore calls upon the Delhi Police to stop this impunity and immediately withdraw the specious FIR filed against her.

Since Naqvi did not create the meme for which she is accused of promoting enmity between different groups under Section 153 IPC and Section 295 (deliberate acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class), and 505 (inducing to commit an offence against the State or against the public tranquillity) of the IPC and since she was not the only one to share the tweet, SAWM feels she is being singled out unfairly.
Naqvi has been a panellist on several television programmes and has always been known for her measured views.

SAWM condemns these attempts by the state to silence voices of dissent and also the propensity to file criminal cases against journalists on flimsy grounds merely because of reportage that shows the state in a bad light. This is an assault on free speech and India’s democratic traditions.

This story first appeared in Institute of Commonwealth Studies

By Nupur Basu
(Independent journalist, award winning documentary film maker, and educator from India.)

On World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2022, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) came out with a numbing statistic on India. It ranked India at 150 out of 180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index, a 17 point fall from its ranking in 2016, just six years back.

The report said : “The violence against journalists, the politically partisan media and the concentration of media ownership all demonstrate that press freedom is in crisis in the world’s largest democracy.”

Last year in 2021 the World Press Freedom Index had ranked India at 142 out of 180 countries. At that point it was down 10 points in 10 years. This time it is a whopping 17 points.

The rapid and year on year decline of press freedom in India is not only reflected in these numbers but on Ground Zero. India has become one of the most dangerous countries to report from in the world and that is a major blow to its democracy.

The results of this decline in press freedom are visible in many ways – the vilification of journalists, police cases registered against them, defamation and sedition suits, imprisonment under draconian and bizarre terror laws and even killings. Increasingly journalists speaking truth to power are being intimidated for going against the ruling BJP government’s narrative and its Hindutva nationalist moorings. The ire against journalists  could be on any issue, ranging from corruption in high places, the government’s economic failures, to coverage of gang rapes and mismanagement during the pandemic.

According to Reporters Without Borders there has been a 35% rise in women journalists being sent to prison for their work worldwide. The pressures and mounting challenges to women journalists and editors are becoming ever more acute. Former American President Donald Trump’s favourite phrase for dubbing news critical of him as ‘fake news’…and his infamous description of the media as the ‘enemy of the people’ appears to have found easy acceptance among Indian politicians who have borrowed and used that narrative here in India freely to discredit media professionals who are trying to do truth telling. Indeed, the phrase – fake news – has become the new weapon of those in power to discredit and disown journalists’ stories if they are unflattering to the government.

As one example of this repressive trend: during the first phase of the COVID-pandemic a First Information Report ( FIR ) was filed against Supriya Sharma, Executive Editor of Scroll.in for doing a story from the Prime Minister’s constituency of Varanasi on how COVID relief had not reached a poor family. A case under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act was filed against her because a Dalit woman whom she had interviewed in her story turned around and denied the comments in the interview.

Supriya Sharma is a well known, award – winning journalist who travelled to the ground during COVID times and narrated the problem that she witnessed first-hand. There was no mala fide in her reporting. One can only imagine what pressure the Dalit woman had been under to deny her story. The Allahabad High Court had to step in and stop the police from arresting Sharma . Nearly two years on, the case has yet to be closed.

There were other attempts to intimidate journalists across the country in the first and second phase of the pandemic, when the public health situation was critical at times . It was clear that the government was not happy to see any truth telling on the desperate plight of the poor migrant labour after the all-India lockdown in 2020, and the gut -wrenching oxygen scarcity and large number of deaths in the second phase of the pandemic in 2021. The government even tried to introduce forms of censorship on the COVID coverage. But India’s Supreme Court thankfully ruled against it.

In another recent event, two young women journalists who had gone to Tripura to cover an incident of communal conflict were held by the police for allegedly reporting ‘fake news’ and “spreading hatred” with their reporting. Finally the courts had to intervene to grant them bail and the women journalists were released. Similar cases have been reported in other parts of the country, including the nation’s capital, Delhi, where women journalists were detained by the police while they were out covering riots.

In 2021 journalists covering the story of a poor Dalit girl who was gangraped in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, saw a television woman journalist’s phone messages being monitored and made public as she was trying to get to the root of the story. (During the same coverage a male journalist Siddiq Kappan was arrested on serious terror charges as he was heading to Hathras. Kappan, a journalist from Kerala, has been in prison without bail for the last 18 months. )

We asked Sujata Madhok, General Secretary of the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) what she thought of the growing intimidation of women journalists in India .

“The situation of women in Indian Media is paradoxical. On the one hand there are far more women in the media than ever before, particularly in the big cities. They can be found in every kind of media, newspapers, periodicals, online news media, YouTube and most visibly on television. They have broken many glass ceilings. Yet their very success makes them targets of attack, particularly on social media.  A few media women have had cases filed against them for stories that are inconvenient to the government. (Many male journalists too are facing such cases and some are behind bars.) They are forced to rush to the courts for protection against arrest and prosecution. Such litigation is expensive and harrowing to deal with” Madhok told us.

Recently when the entire Pegasus scam erupted globally, India was very much at the centre of the media story. Pegasus, an Israeli Spyware, was allegedly purchased by the authorities and installed in the mobile phones of several Indian journalists. These included women journalists such as Rohini Singh who was doing stories on alleged corruption of people in the highest echelons of power. As yet there has been no admission from the government as to who actually authorised this surveillance. The matter is pending in court. The government denies having had any hand in the surveillance. But it is a well-known fact that the Israeli company selling this spyware deals only with governments. Attempts to spy on journalists and find out their sources are all contributing factors to India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index crashing down to 150.

In effect, all red lines have been breached when it comes to the safety and security of women journalists. This is true globally, and India is no exception. Velvet Revolution, a documentary produced by the International Association of Women in Radio and Television (IAWRT), which I directed along with five other women directors, showcased the increasing vulnerability of women journalists across the world. In the last decade both state and non-state actors seemed to have become trigger-happy with women journalists, in terms of their persecution and even murder. The red line which was there before had proverbially vanished.

In India it was crossed with the gruesome killing of journalist/activist Gauri Lankesh in India’s Information Technology city, Bangalore, on September 5, 2017. Gauri had just put her edition to bed and was returning to her house from work in the evening when masked men riding motor bikes approached her gate and fired seven bullets into her frail and petite frame. She died on the spot.

The trial of Gauri’s assassins is finally scheduled to begin on 27 May, 2022, a delay of four and a half years . Altogether 18 people are on the charge sheet and 17 have been arrested. They all have alleged links with a radical group that claims to propagate Hindutva. The judge has asked for the accused to be presented in court or join online on video from the jail premises.

Even after Gauri’s brutal assassination, online trolls continued to abuse her. The journalist was no more. But the haters continued to spew hate on a corpse. They also proceeded to publish and spread the names of other women journalists who were next in line for elimination. This is a shocking development: these are effectively public death warrants against women journalists and activists being put out on social media in India in the 21st century; yet the social media platforms putting out those hate-filled messages and the government remained mute.

Women journalists are subject to what the United Nations has called “double attacks”. They are threatened both offline and online. Online abuse has reached dizzying proportions. The social media has been weaponised against women journalists and online misogyny has become endemic. Rape, kidnap threats, death threats have become a daily diet on the Twitter handles of women journalists. Indian women journalists such as Arfa Khanum, Rana Ayub, Neha Dixit, Bhasha Singh, Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghosh, Saba Naqvi, and Nidhi Razdan are all regularly subjected to vicious attacks on the social media platforms.

In India this online assault has played out in abhorrent ways with women journalists’ photographs morphed with the bodies of porn artists and their telephone numbers and addresses published. The recent cyber crimes in India of #Sulli Deals and #Bulli Bai apps that had put women journalists, particularly Muslim women journalists, up for auction, was another new low in digital crime in India.

Senior journalist and author Saba Naqvi who was targeted wrote on Twitter on January 2, 2022: “Feeling nauseated to get calls from the media saying my name also on the #BulliDeals.Told its still active and any Muslim woman who speaks out is listed. In solidarity with all women out there and the only silver lining is that so many brave young women annoying hate mongers..communal misogyny is a separate mental condition”. @_sabanaqvi

According to Sujata Madhok, General Secretary of the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) – “In a deeply political and polarized country, media women who speak truth to power are considered fair game for any kind of abuse on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media where anonymity emboldens abusers. The ruling BJP’s IT Cell, for instance, unleashes hundreds of trolls on leading women journalists for their comments on political and social developments. Other groups too launch such attacks. However, online anonymity makes it difficult to identify abusers. Predictably, the threats are sexist and often pornographic in nature.  Several women journalists have complained of threats of rape and murder. Some of the worst hate attacks are against minority Muslim women journalists.’’

Despite the outrage against such attacks, there is very little justice for the complainants. Journalist Rana Ayub, a global opinion writer for The Washington Post, has been viciously targeted by trolls in the last decade for her critique of the policies of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The author of the self-published book ; “Gujarat Files –  anatomy of a cover up” which was based on a sting operation during the Gujarat riots when Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat, Rana has been continuously trolled and abused by right wing Hindutva groups and even by the right wing media. Recently she was the subject of raids by the Enforcement Directorate on charges of “money laundering” of charity funds raised for COVID victims. She has firmly denied these charges. The United Nations condemned the vilification of Rana and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa expressed her solidarity with her.

However, the official harassment continues. In April 2022 Rana was stopped at Mumbai airport and not allowed to board a flight to Italy where she had been invited to deliver a keynote address at the International Journalism Festival 22. She had to secure a court order to be allowed finally to board the flight after a harrowing bureacucratic procedure.

While delivering the keynote address at IJF 22 at Perugia, titled “When the state attacks: journalism under fire in the world’s biggest democracy”, Rana Ayub recounted the mental agony that she had undergone due to this sustained targeting which she said had triggered panic attacks and severe depression.  “Ï have put my entire family in jeopardy with my journalism” she said, adding, however, that she would continue to report from India on all that was going wrong with India’s democracy. “Ï am proud of the fact that the government is scared of my words . I would not like for me to be admired by any political party in India, I would not like that. Over my persecution no political party has stood up in solidarity with me and I take that as a badge of honour. There is an unpopular truth that we must speak and I am here to speak that.”

The Chair, Julie Posetti, Global Director of Research at the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) described the attacks on Rana by government agencies and right wing trolls as “extremely reprehensible” and said that all world governments and international media should to take note. “We have been studying Rana’s case and analysed the 8.5 million twitter posts directed against Rana- the hostility, the misogyny, the reprehensible attacks and the ways in which they come torrentially ..”

Posetti told the audience: “We demanded ..because we had to ..that Rana could fly and she did and she is here..and she’s here because she has a compelling reason to be here..she has a compelling and important story to tell ..its a story of state-based harassment and vilification and unfortunately its becoming a very familiar story around the world. But in India, the world’s biggest democracy, it is an essential story for us to hear and ensure we are understanding the myriad challenges when it comes to producing journalism as a freelance woman journalist, who is Muslim and who is attempting to hold power to account in the context of what Rana refers to as potential genocide.”

The UN Secretary General said recently that a survey done by the UN had revealed that 72% of women journalists were being intimidated and harassed for just doing their daily job. Digital media in particular has been the vehicle to heap abuse on women journalists for the truth telling they are doing. But the more they abuse, the more the women are coming out with more and more ground breaking and important stories.

Recently, a top scientist in India said that women journalists were the “real heroines ” of the COVID coverage in the country . They went relentlessly into the field in the most difficult times…to hospitals, morgues, burial grounds and burning ghats. and recorded the hopelessness and human suffering unleashed by the pandemic. They did stories on India’s poor public health infrastructure to deal with a health emergency like a pandemic, the subsequent deaths amounting to over 4 million according to the Lancet . The Indian authorities have rubbished this figure and posted COVID death statistics which are ten times lower than this figure.

Truth telling by women journalists ,in the face of repressive tactics unleashed by governments and other undemocratic forces, comes despite the atmosphere of intimidation, arrests, raids, espionage and death threats . This is indeed good news for journalism.

But two questions beg answering:
Are women journalists in India doing a much more dangerous job than they set out to do?
And will those trolling, criminalising, arresting and killing them get away with impunity?

Clearly institutions like India’s Supreme Court, the Commonwealth, the United Nations must urgently draft stringent laws and punishments and do all in their power to end this unbridled impunity and ensure that persecutors are brought to justice. And media rights organisations in India and around the globe must continue to highlight the erosion of press freedom in India in the coming months.

The Gauri Lankesh murder trial for one will be watched keenly when in begins in the fourth week of May.

(The author of this piece Nupur Basu is a senior journalist and documentary filmmaker)

Link to original story

We have discussed elaborately..we are passing this order. In view of the above, Union of India agrees with the Prima facie opinion expressed by the Court that the rigours of Section 124A is not in accordance with the current social milieu.

It will be appropriate not to use this provision of law till further rexamination is over.

We hope and expect Centre & State Govts will refrain from registering any FIR, continuing investigation, or taking coercive steps under 124 A IPC when its under reconsideration.

Those already booked under Section 124A IPC and are in jail can approach the courts for bail.

All pending cases, appeals and proceedings with respect to charges framed under Section124 A be kept in abeyance. Adjudication with respect to other sections may proceed with no prejudice be caused to accused.

In addition, Union of India shall be at liberty to issue directives proposed and placed before us to States/UTs to prevent misuse of sec 124 A.

If any fresh case is registered appropriate parties are at liberty to approach courts for appropriate relief and courts are requested to examine the relief sought taking into account the order passed by this court.

The above directions to continue till further orders.

This story first appeared in www.livelaw.in

The Supreme Court on Wednesday posted to May 5 for final hearing the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the offence of sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code.

A bench comprising the Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli was considering two writ petitions filed by Army veteran Major-General SG Vombatkere (Retired) and the Editors Guild of India respectively.

Solicitor General of India Mr.Tushar Mehta submitted that the Central Government’s counter-affidavit is ready and can be filed within two days.

The bench posted the matter for final disposal on May 5, after directing the Centre to file its affidavit by the end of this week. The reply to the affidavit should be filed by next Tuesday. No further adjournment will be granted, the bench said. “We’ll have hearing on May 5th. No adjournment, we’ll have full day hearings”, CJI Ramana said.

Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for the petitioners. Senior Advocate Sanjay Parikh mentioned a petition filed by Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) which has not been listed. Senior Advocate Vrinda Grover mentioned a Petition filed by journalists Patricia Mukhim and Anuradha Bhasin, which was also not listed.

The CJI asked if it was necessary to multiply the petitions on the same point of law and delay the matter. Mr. Parikh submitted that he will assist Mr.Sibal in the lead case and will not multiply the submissions.

While issuing notice on the petitions in July 2021, the CJI had orally made critical remarks against the provision.

“Is it still necessary to retain this colonial law which the British used to suppress Gandhi, Tilak etc., even after 75 years of independence?”, the CJI had asked the Attorney General for India.

“If we go see history of charging of this section, the enormous power of this section can be compared to a carpenter being given a saw to make an item, uses it to cut the entire forest instead of a tree. That’s the effect of this provision”, the CJI had said.

In April 2021, another bench led by Justice UU Lalit had issued notice on a petition filed by two journalists challenging Section 124A IPC.

Case Title: S.G. VOMBATKERE vs UNION OF INDIA ( WPC 682/2021) EDITORS GUILD OF INDIA AND ANR. vs UNION OF INDIA AND ORS. (WPC 552/2021)

Link to original story

Thousands of Sri Lankans are converging at the Galle Face Green on Colombo, a landmark esplanade opposite the Presidential Secretariat calling on President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign.

The people’s protest has grown in number since it started about a week ago with people giving vent to anger against the president and his government over shortages of fuel, domestic gas , power outages and rising costs of essential goods.

The Galle Face Green with the central theme “ Go Home Gota” have brought together people from all walks of life, ethnicities & religions cutting across political party affiliations which usually divide people when calls to send a politician is the message.

The movement has also widened with calls for an end to rule by the Rajapaksa family and for more accountability, transparency & peoples participation in decision making.