Various journalist organisations in the country have petitioned Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud seeking the judiciary’s attention to the attacks on press freedom in the country.
The plea comes in the immediate aftermath of the Delhi Police’s raids on and questionings of 46 journalists, editors, writers, and professionals seemingly connected in one way or another to the online news portal, Newsclick. Several of the journalists’ electronic devices were seized and the portal’s director Prabir Purkayastha and its HR head Amit Chakravarty were arrested.
The letter has sought the courts’ help in framing of norms to discourage the seizure of journalists’ phones and laptops on a whim, evolving guidelines for the interrogation of journalists and for seizures from them and finding ways to ensure the accountability of state agencies and individual officers who are found overstepping the law.
“We do not say that journalists are above the law. We are not and do not wish to be. However, intimidation of the media affects the democratic fabric of society. And subjecting journalists to a concentrated criminal process because the government disapproves of their coverage of national and international affairs is an attempt to chill the press by threat of reprisal—the very ingredient you identified as a threat to freedom,” the organisations said.
