Increasing Tendency of Police to Attack & Intimidate Journalists is Extremely Disturbing: Editors Guild of India on Sidhi Incident

The Editors Guild of India (EGI), in a statement, has expressed shock and outrage over an incident in the Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh where the local police arrested, stripped and humiliated a local journalist as well as some members of the civil society, on April 2.

The blatant misuse of police power happened in retaliation against the protest and arrest of a local reported, Kanishk Tiwari, who had covered the arrest of a theatre artist named Neeraj Kunder. Kunder was arrested by the local police in a case concerning alleged indecent remarks against a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Kedarnath Shukla and his son Kedar Gurudutt Sharan Shukla using a fake Facebook profile.

The police have booked Tiwari and others under several IPC sections that "provide punishment for assault, preventing a public servant from discharging duties, wrongful restraint, intentional insult, and acts done by several persons with wrongful intention." After the arrest, all of them were made to strip down to their undergarments in police custody. The police shot pictures of this incident and later released them on social order to shame and humiliate them.

Following the outrage over the incident, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Shivraj Singh Chauhan, "has suspended the cops and ordered an inquiry." Despite that,

The EGI statement called out the "increasing tendency of the police and local administration to brazenly attack and intimidate journalists is extremely disturbing and needs to be checked," highlighting another incident in Odisha on April 7 where Balasore police "chained a journalist's leg to a hospital bed after an alleged case of assault." The journalist Lokanth Deali claimed that the police had arrested him in retaliation for reporting police corruption.

"The inhumane manner in which journalists, stringers and district reporters are often treated by the police, in an effort to suppress any independent reporting is a matter of grave concern. The Editors Guild of India urges the Union Home Ministry to take immediate cognisance of police excesses against journalists and civil society members, and issue stern directions to all levels of law enforcement agencies to respect democratic values and freedom of the press. At the same time, strict action needs to be taken against those who misuse state power," the statement read.

In a separate statement, the National Alliance of Journalists (NAJ) and the Delhi Union of Journalists (DUJ) have also strongly condemned the incident, calling it an "an arbitrary misuse of power." The journalists' bodies also called for an immediate halt to such incidents, "release of the arrested and a time-bound enquiry."