PUCL Bulletin,
July 1982
A brief
diary of attacks on the press
1979
March - The Press Council is set up for the purpose of preserving
the freedom of the Press and improving its standard.
1980
September 22 - The office of the Indian Express in Bangalore is
gheraoed.
October 3 - The wife of a journalist, Naba Kishore Mohapatra, is
raped and killed in Biridi (in Cuttack) because he exposed a well-connected
businessman in Orissa.
October 18 - Karnataka Chief Minister Gundu Rao accuses some newspaper
proprietors of hatching a plot to topple his Government.
November 23 - Ten journalists are assaulted at Pathuana village in the
Bharatpur district where they had gone to cover a bye-election.
1981
January 3 - A one-man committee set up by the Rajasthan working
Journalists Union gives its report on the assault on the ten journalists.
They were assaulted while trying to probe the charges of bogus voting.
January 12 - The office of the Hindustan Times is attacked in Bhopal,
allegedly, by Lok Dal workers.
January 21 - Three journalists are injured by stone throwing miscreants
in Ahmedabad.
January 24 - A news agency messenger is assaulted while distributing
news packets to newspapers in Calcutta.
February 19 - Jatadhari Ran, a mofussil correspondent of a daily
of Bhubaneshwar is arrested, handcuffed and paraded by the Puri's District
Police.
March 3 - Ishwar Das Mishra, editor of Janvarta of Varanasi is
assaulted.
March 9 - About 150 miscreants attack the offices of three newspapers
in Cuttack.
March 19 - Newspapers report the murder of Narinder Singh, the
editor of a Jamshedpur weekly.
March 23 - Indian Express photographer, a staff reporter and another
journalist are assaulted by police in Hussainiwala.
March 28 - All the three dailies of Chhatarpur come out without
any news on their front pages in protest against the harassment of journalists
by the district administration.
April 11 - The editor of a Hindi weekly Parchand is whisked from
Delhi to Haryana allegedly for his critical writings. On his release,
he complains of brutal treatment druing detention.
June 12 - Uttam Chand Sharma, the editor of the Muzaffarnagar Bulletin
(Hindi) says that his office staff was beaten up and furniture destroyed
by 15 armed men.
July 23 - The office of Kinakaran in Coimbatore is attacked, allegedly,
by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.
- Gur Kirat Singh, a crime reporter of the National Herald is assaulted
in Faridabad (in Haryana) outside a gambling den where he had gone for
investigative reporting.
September 9 - Lala Jagat Narain, the founder editor of the Hind
Samachar group of newspapers is murdered on the outskirts of Ludhiana.
December 4 - police registered a case against K. Narendra, editor
of Pratap for causing "disaffection among different communities"
by a write up in the newspaper. The case was filed under Section 153 (A)
I.P.C.
December 5 - Senior Superintendent of Police of Aligarh district
allegedly threatened to kill an Indian Express reporter. The SSP's out
burst was linked with Aligarh reporting in Indian Express.
- Parliament discussed reported threats to the editor of Naya Zamana,
for writing against the Khalistan movement. Dal Khalsa had reportedly
threatened to murder. J. S. Anand, the editor, in a letter to him, if
he continued to oppose the Khalistan movement.
December 17 - Youth Congress (I) supporters stormed the Press Trust
of India office in New Delhi. They were protesting against non-coverage
of their party's activities by PTI.
December 20 - Prabhar, a popular Marathi daily, was reportedly
facing closure due to shortage of newsprint.
1982
January 5 - The Press Council of India found as justified the complaint
of Manush Patrika a daily published in Tripura, that the state government
had illegally stopped advertisements to it. The council felt that there
was a direct linkage between articles written by the daily and the stoppage
of advertisements.
January 6 - Arcot Veeraswami, MLC, Managing Editor of the Tamil
daily Ethiroli, T. P. Radhakrishnan and Kilji Singhamuthu, director and
printer-cum-publisher respectively of the newspaper and N. Srinivasan,
brother of Veeraswami, were arrested and latter released on bail. The
arrests were made under section 292 (A) following a police investigation
on a complaint of H. V. Mandi, the Tamilnadu Health Minister, in connection
with what the Minister described as a scurrilous news item that appeared
in the Ethiroli issue of October 15, 1981.
January 22 - T . Anjaih, the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister threatened
to see the journalists arrested. It was alleged by a Lok Dal MLA in Uttar
Pradesh Assembly that a secret directive had been issued to the police
to deal ruthlessly with journalists daring to write about the omissions
and commissions of the Government and the ruling party.
February 6 - A delhi sub-judge restrained India Today a fortnightly
magazine, from publishing any article on Charanjit Singh, Congress (I)
M. P. and soft drinks magnate.
February 13 - The Prime Minster accused the Indian press of functioning
as the opposition. "It is not functioning as a free press".
'The Press is the opposition in India. What is called the national press
leads the opposition in India. It is not just reporting. Their reporting
is absolutely baseless", she alleged.
February 16 - R. K. Gupta, a BJP M.L.A in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly
drew the attention of the House to alleged rude behaviour of the Sitapur-Hardoi
police with a journalist who has been exposing police activities. He said
that on
February 13, Khala Bazar police entered the house of Ashok Tripathi
and misbehaved with the members of his family in his absence.
March 9 - The news editor of Indian Express received anonymous
telephonic calls threatening to murder him in three days if he continued
to publish news items pertaining to the cement fraud involving an Andrha
Pradesh Minister.
March 13 - the Uttar Preadesh Assembly was informed about the arrest
of two Etah journalists. B. K. Gupta, an MLA, alleged that the district
administration in Etah was intimidating and coercing independent journalists.
The two journalists had exposed the corruption prevalent in the Etah municipal
board.
-Correspondents in Jammu and Kashmir including representatives of the
major national and foreign newsppaers and news agencies continued their
boycott of Assembly proceedings. They were protesting against the speaker's
orders to watch and ward officials not to permit journalists entry into
the Assembly lobby.
April 25 - The Patna bureau of UNI, a national English news agency,
was radided by a group of armed gangsters brandishing knives and other
weapons. The attackers threatened the staff on duty with dire consequences,
ransacked the office and decamped with a typewriter.
The intruders also warned the staff that their bureau manager would be
killed.
April 30 - A chandigarh based newsman, Prabhjot Singh, became the
target of mob fury while discharging his professional duties. Singh, a
staff correspondent of Tribune, was hit all over the body and kicked around
by a mob of nearly 50 persons near the Mahakali Temple where a tail of
an animal was recovered earlier.
May 4 - The Uttar Pradesh Government instructed all the police
officers in the state not to give information to press reporters under
any circumstances. Violations of the circular will result in disciplinary
action.
May 16 - A group of 20 young men said to be Naxalites raided the
offices of two Siliguri dailies Uttarbanga Sambad and Himal Ohulli and
set fire to the rotary and offset machines. The raid was reportedly against
a news item about the current Assembly elections in the State.
May 19 - A journalist was assaulted and his eyes gouged out by
a group of employees of the cooperative department in Banda district of
Uttar Pradesh. The journalist was attacked when he was going to file a
F.I.R.
-Three newsmen were taken away an dallegeldy confined illegally in the
house of a U. P. Minister of State, Gulab Singh in Dehradun.
May 27 - The Deputy Minister for Information and Broadcasting,
Arif Mohammad Khan, warned newspapers that if they did comply with the
Government order of specifying the number of copies printed of the previous
issue in every copy of newspapers and periodicals, the Government may
have to consider the eligibility of such newspapers for allocation of
newsprint.
June 2 - Singamuthu, editor and printer of the Tamil eveninger
Ethiroli was arrested under section 292 A (A) and (D) of I. P. C. in connection
with the publication of a news item concerning the foreign trip of a State
Minister. The minister found the reporting "highly scurrilous and
indecent".
June 29 - The Bihar Government armed itself with powers to deal
with recognised newspapers, news agencies and accredited newsmen against
publication of "false or motivated" reports. The Bihar accreditation
Rules, 1922, provides for deaccreditation of newsmen in the event of "misuse
of facilities accorded through accreditation or violation of the Official
Secrets Act.