Human Rights Watch condemns police cases against journalists, calls for impartial probe into R-Day events

Eight journalists who covered the farmer protests in India and violence in Delhi on January 26, 2021 are facing baseless criminal charges, New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. The Indian authorities should drop the charges, which include sedition, promoting communal disharmony, and making statements prejudicial to national integration, it said in a statement posted on its website.

“The Indian authorities’ response to protests has focused on discrediting peaceful protesters, harassing critics of the government, and prosecuting those reporting on the events,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government instead should conduct a transparent and impartial investigation into the January 26 violence in Delhi.”

The police in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Haryana states have filed cases of sedition and promoting communal disharmony against six senior journalists and editors – Rajdeep Sardesai, Mrinal Pande, Zafar Agha, Paresh Nath, Anant Nath, Vinod K Jose, and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor – for allegedly “misreporting” the facts around the death of a protester on January 26.

Delhi Police, which reports to the Union Home Ministry also filed a case against them.

On January 31, Uttar Pradesh police also filed a case of promoting enmity between communities and making statements prejudicial to national integration against Siddarth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, for tweeting a news report on the claims made by the farmer who lost his life on January 26. His family has alleged that he died from gunshot injuries, while the police said he died when his tractor overturned.