FIR against ‘The Wire’ editor in UP for tweet

FIR against ‘The Wire’ editor in UP for tweet

New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh Police on Saturday filed a first information report against The Wire’s Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan for tweeting an article published on the news website reporting that the farmer who was killed during a tractor rally on Republic Day had died in police firing.
The article, published on Friday, cited the family of Navreet Singh who rejected the Delhi Police’s claims that the farmer had died after his tractor overturned. The family has alleged that the man was shot.
A case under Indian Penal Code Sections 153-B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration) and 505(2) (statements conducing to public mischief) has been filed in the state’s Rampur district. The FIR was filed on a complaint by one Sanju Turaha, a resident of Rampur district, according to The Print.
The FIR referred to Varadarajan’s tweet from Saturday in which he shared The Wire’s article. It stated that report was presented in a manner which made it seem like the doctor, who conducted the autopsy of the farmer, had confirmed that he died of a bullet injury.
“As a result, Rampur’s people have become resentful, and tension has increased,” it added. “This post certainly seems to be a part of a conspiracy to incite violence with the aim of making an unfair profit by harming the general public.”
In the article, Hardeep Singh Dibdiba, Navreet Singh’s grandfather, claimed that one of the doctors told him about a bullet wound. “We were told by the doctor that they have clearly seen the bullet injury, and then we cremated his body peacefully,” Dibdiba was quoted as saying by The Wire. “But we were cheated, as the [postmortem] report that came out did not say that. The doctor even told me that even though he had seen the bullet injury, he can do nothing as his hands are tied.”
However, the doctors have refuted this. The postmortem analysis, done on January 27 at 2 pm, said that the “cause of death is shock and haemorrhage as a result of ante-mortem head injury”. The Delhi Police has also claimed that this was the cause of death. The Rampur district magistrate also clarified that no other official statement was made from the side of the authorities.
The Wire’s report had included these statements by the police and doctors rejecting the family’s claims.
However, the FIR alleged that the article had wrongly quoted the government medical officer in order to “incite” the general public.
It said that Singh’s postmortem was conducted by three panel doctors and was duly videographed. It added that all the three doctors have denied giving any such statement to anybody. “Despite this, the tweet has not been removed yet,” the FIR stated, adding that post was intended to “disturb peace and law and order” by “intentionally posting provocative posts through social media- Twitter without knowing the right facts”.
The Rampur DM had tweeted that the article could cause ‘law and order problem’. The district magistrate also attached a denial note by the three government medical officers who conducted the postmortem, claiming that none of them had spoken to anybody from the media, or made any statement about the autopsy.
In response, Varadarajan informed the DM that The Wire report had been updated to include the official declaration by the three doctors. To this, the DM responded, “Hope you understand your story could cause a law and order problem here. It has already caused tensed situation here. Responsibility?”
Hours later, the FIR was registered in Uttar Pradesh.
Meanwhile, Varadarajan on Sunday morning reacted to the FIR registered against him. “What’s the IPC [Indian Penal Code] provision for ‘malicious prosecution’,” he asked. “Here is the UP Police indulging in it, filing an FIR against me for tweeting about what the grandfather of farmer who was killed in the tractor parade had said on the record!”
In a separate tweet, the journalist wrote: “In UP, it is a crime for media to report statements of relatives of a dead person if they question a postmortem or police version of cause of death.”
Several states have registered cases against journalists who have reported on the death of the farmer on January 26. The Editors Guild of India has described the action as a concerted attempt to “stifle and harass” media.
Agencies

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