FIRs against Journalists for Inciting Violence

▪️Why in news? 

✅Recently Congress MP Shashi Tharoor & other journalists were booked in sedition case for their social media posts. 

✅It is alleged that these posts were responsible for violence during 26 Jan tractor rally by farmers in Delhi. 

▪️What are the charges against them? 

✅The police have invoked the offences of sedition (124A of IPC), conspiracy (Section 120B of IPC), promotion of enmity between different sections and breach of harmony between groups.  

✅Besides, they have sought to portray it as a threat to national security and an attempt to instigate violence.  

✅ A similar FIR has been filed based on the complaint in Bhopal, but it invokes only sections relating to promotion of enmity and ill-will. 

 

▪️How did the journalists respond to this? 

✅They said that it was natural for journalists to report emerging details on a day of protest when reports were coming from eyewitnesses on the ground and the police. 

✅They were concerned about the attempt made by police to portray these intentionally malicious. 

✅They said that it is not surprising to invoke sedition case against them by the police because it is a now familiar practice of creating an imagined threat to national security. 

✅And whenever police get an opportunity to slap criminal cases against journalists who are highly critical of current establishment, they invoke these sections of IPC.

 

▪️What can we infer from this? 

✅It is strange that the police have sought to link the violence on January 26 with the circulation of a piece of misleading information.  

✅ An enraging part is that all those who put similar information through their social media are seen to be acting in concert and even participating in the same conspiracy. 

✅Registration of cases in 2 different states from the place where violence occurred indicates an attempt to build a story that media misreports are the cause for the violence that day. 

✅It also shows a tendency not to miss an opportunity to harass and intimidate journalists.