Indian Editors Guild wants defamation law decriminalised, after journalist arrests

• Three media person were arrested on Sunday for allegedly posting “objectionable comments” related to Yogi Adiyanath.
  
• The Editors Guild of India took to Twitter to express concern over the issue on Sunday, saying it is a brazen misuse of law.

Three media person were arrested on Sunday for allegedly posting “objectionable comments” related to Yogi Adiyanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, according to media reports.


The journalists included Prashant Kanojia and the editor and head of a Noida-based television channel Nation Live, Ishita Singh and Anuj Shukla


The Indian Editors Guild took to Twitter to express concern over the issue on Sunday, saying it is a brazen misuse of law and an “effort to intimidate the press and stifle freedom of expression”.


Following the arrest the Editor guild has reiterated its demand to strike down the defamation law to avoid misuse.


According to the Editors Guild, “The police action is high-handed, arbitrary and amounts to an authoritarian misuse of laws. The Guild sees it as an effort to intimidate the press, and stifle freedom of expression.”



Prasant Kanojia was arrested from his home in West Vinod Nagar in New Delhi following a complaint alleging that he tried to “malign” Yogi Adityanath’s reputation. Kanojia, who is a freelance journalist, shared a video on his twitter account of a woman who said Yogi Adityanath sent him a marriage proposal. The noida-based news channel aired a story on the same woman.


The Editor Guild pointed out the FIR against Vishweshwar Bhat, editor-in-chief of the Karnataka newspaper Vishwavani who published a story on Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy’s son Nikhil reporting that he got into a drunken altercation with his grandfather, former prime minister HD Deve Gowda.


The FIR in this case too is filed as a suo motu by the policy and not by the person directly affected by the story.