The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has condemned the attempt at criminalising the writings of Supriya Sharma, executive editor of the digital news publication Scroll.in.
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In a statement, PUCL president Ravi Kiran Jain and general secretary V. Suresh said the criminal provisions invoked against the journalist do not apply to the complaint made by the aggrieved individual. Ms. Sharma was booked for alleged misreporting about the poverty of a Dalit woman in her article, ‘In Varanasi village adopted by Prime Minister Modi, people went hungry during the lockdown.’
“The FIR against Supriya is an attempt to harass her via the police machinery as she showed the failure of the State to protect livelihoods and provide for rations in the Prime Minister’s constituency. It is well known by now that nobody is allowed to be critical of the PM or show his constituency in a bad light,” the statement read.
“A pandemic and the subsequent lockdown should not be excuses to clamp down on the media,” they stated, condemning the attempts to intimidate media persons and prevent them from playing the role of an independent and critical watchdog of liberty, democracy and governance.
