'The woman booked for a social media post questioning the lack of transparency in the government’s response to the gas leak which killed 12 people in Visakhapatnam earlier this month says that she is being targeted for raising basic humanitarian concerns. In a move that is being seen as a blatant attack by the Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government on the right to free speech, the Andhra Pradesh police registered a case against the 60-year-old resident of Guntur on May 19, calling her Facebook post ‘objectionable’...'
'A case of sedition has been registered against a young man for allegedly making ‘objectionable remarks’ on Facebook about Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath, the Indian Express reported... The FIR alleges, “Rajesh Kumar Shukla, a resident of Allahabad, had said in his Facebook post ‘I do not understand why Priyanka Gandhi Vadra did not hire Uttar Pradesh Transport Corporation buses for migrant laborers?’ On this post, a resident of Allahabad, Anoop Singh, made objectionable remarks against Yogi Adityanath. He said, “Yogi kutta hai is liye (because Yogi is a dog).”...'
'Tansen Tiwari, a veteran journalist from Gwalior district in Madhya Pradesh, has been booked by the police for referring to Bharatiya Janata Party leaders as gappu (braggart) and tadipar (externed) in a social media post on Sunday. The Gwalior police registered the case after a local BJP leader and advocate, Awdhesh Singh Bhadauria, reported the matter to the Gola Ka Mandir police station on his party’s letterhead...'
'Local authorities across India filed legal notices against, questioned, or detained at least eight journalists between March 29, 2020, and May 17, 2020, amid the country’s lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus, according to CPJ interviews with the journalists and media reports. According to Om Sharma, a journalist with Hindi daily Divya Himachal in Baddi district of Himachal Pradesh, who spoke to CPJ via phone, and the New Delhi-based news website Newslaundry, since late March police have opened three criminal investigations against Sharma.
'In the latest instance of harassment of the media for critical reporting, the Uttar Pradesh administration has lodged an FIR against Ravindra Saxena, a journalist at Today-24 news portal for reporting on the mismanagement and negligence at a quarantine centre in Sitapur district. In a video report, Saxena spoke to people at a quarantine centre in Maholi tehsil of Sitapur district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, who alleged that they were served rotten rice...'
'Last week, The New Indian Express, one of India’s major English newspapers, pulled down an article that was heavily critical of the Centre’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The article, entitled ‘Centre’s COVID-19 Communication Plan: hold back data, gag agencies and scientists’, discussed the government’s reluctance to share outbreak-related data and attempts to muzzle scientists.
'At least six journalists have been booked by Himachal Pradesh police for comments and ground reports on problems being faced by migrant labourers, businesses and citizens during the COVID-19 lockdown. According to a report on Newslaundry, the reasons behind these cases filed against the journalists ranged from their reporting on hunger among migrant workers, lack of proper food distribution, to their social media activity which involved sharing reports of other newspapers, to criticising the district administration for laxity in areas such as quarantining inter-state travellers...'
'The editor of a Gujarati news portal was charged with sedition and questioned by the police after he published a report that suggested the chief minister could be changed by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party due to rising number of coronavirus cases in the state...'
'The Indian media have not been active in checking Islamophobia during the coronavirus pandemic. They are equally culpable of being passive when it comes to questioning the government. A global pandemic, it is being argued, may not be the best time to subject the government to scrutiny. On the contrary, it is all the more important for the media to keep a strict vigil on the government’s actions at a time like this. Instead, large sections of the media have become the drum-beaters of the government’s self-congratulatory pronouncements on Covid-19.
'The Madhya Pradesh police has booked five persons, including three minors, for posting a Facebook comment on Union agriculture and farmers welfare minister Narendra Singh Tomar mocking the incorrect way in which he was wearing a face mask. All the accused – Ajay Pratap Singh Sikarwar, Aman Singh, and minors AB, XX and YY* – are residents of Jaura village in Morena, which the Union minister represents in the Lok Sabha...'
