Several prominent journalist bodies sought the intervention of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud in the matter of recent police raids on the residences of journalists and seizure of their devices. The letter addressed to DY Chandrachud has been signed by multiple organisations including Digipub News India Foundation, Indian Women\u2019s Press Corps, and the Press Club of India among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The journalist bodies asserted that a large section of journalists in India finds themselves working under the threat of reprisal. They added that it is imperative that the Judiciary confronts power with a fundamental truth that there is a constitution to which we are all answerable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They further demanded framing of norms to discourage the seizure of journalists’ phones and laptops on a whim, as has been the case, evolving guidelines for the interrogation of journalists and for seizures from them, to ascertain that these are not undertaken as fishing expeditions with no bearing on actual offences and finding ways to ensure the accountability of state agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The press bodies noted the instance of raids conducted on October 3 on the homes of 46 employees of news portal NewsClick including journalists, editors, writers, and professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The letter added that 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The letter underlined that the journalist bodies do not say that journalists are above the law and they do not wish to be. In addition, it noted that intimidation of the media affects the democratic fabric of society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It continued that as journalists and news professionals, they are always ready and willing to cooperate with any bona fide investigation. Nonetheless, ad hoc, sweeping seizures and interrogations surely cannot be considered acceptable in any democratic country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The letter addressed to DY Chandrachud has been signed by multiple organisations including Digipub News India Foundation, Indian Women\u2019s Press Corps, and the Press Club of India among others. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":490607,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1497,125714],"tags":[1803,160846],"yst_prominent_words":[7031,26901,21642,37327,3704,9307,15456,6981,10629,24903,67046,27713,29582,68998,8512,29994],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2023\/10\/05101033\/images-28-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490605"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490605"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=490605"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=490605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}