55 Indian Journalists Arrested, Booked, Threatened For Reporting on COVID-19: Report

'Ashwini Saini is a contributor to a Facebook page that publishes news on the Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh. Saini, who also works as a freelancer for the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran, filed a video report for the page, called ‘Mandi Live’, on April 8. The report highlighted the failure of the district administration in supplying rations to migrant workers stranded in the district’s Sundernagar sub-division. Though it featured workers who related their plight to the lockdown and lack of rations on camera, the Sundernagar sub-divisional magistrate Rahul Chauhan filed an FIR against Saini under the Disaster Management Act, accusing him of spreading ‘fake news’. An aggrieved Saini wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and state chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, accusing the SDO of “gagging the press”...'