New Delhi: The Editors Guild of India (EGI) on Monday accused the Uttar Pradesh police of passing off the demise of a TV journalist as being brought on by an accident, claiming they didn’t pay any heed despite the fact that he had knowledgeable them concerning the hazard to his life.
In a press release, the guild stated it’s shocked by “the cavalier method” through which the Uttar Pradesh police is treating the “mysterious demise” of Sulabh Srivastava in Pratapgarh.
In response to the police, Srivastava died on Sunday after his bike rammed right into a pole in Pratapgarh. He was getting back from Ashrahi village beneath Lalganj police station space when the incident came about.
The journalist had just lately run a narrative concerning the liquor mafia.
The guild stated Srivastava, who was threatened by the liquor mafia for exposing their wrongdoings, had just lately written a letter to the police expressing grave apprehensions for his life.
The journalist believed that some individuals had been following him, it stated, including the authorities paid no heed to his fears.
Srivastava died a few days after writing the letter to the police, it stated.
“The police is passing off his demise as being brought on by an accident, claiming that his bike rammed right into a handpump,” the guild charged.
The EGI stated the journalist’s demise comes at a time when media is going through “rising pressures from the central and the state governments who insist that they comply with the official narrative relating to the administration’s dealing with of the pandemic”.
What’s additional worrying is that the police and the native authorities “liberally and unjustifiably” use legal guidelines equivalent to sedition and the UAPA to file expenses and arrest journalists, the editors’ physique charged.
“That is in opposition to the spirit of the judgement given by the Supreme Courtroom in Kedar Nath Singh case and reiterated within the current sedition case in opposition to Vinod Dua,” the EGI stated.
It alleged that journalists and cartoonists crucial of the federal government are additionally being focused on social media as pressures are being mounted by the federal government on these platforms to take away such crucial journalists on the specious floor that they’re violating the legislation of the land.
“All of that is opposite to the commitments that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made on the G-7 summit to democracy, openness and in opposition to authoritarianism,” the EGI stated.