By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, March 26, 2024: The Press Club of India on March 26 condemned the assault on photojournalists by the Delhi police.
“Any form of assault on journalists and photojournalists is totally unacceptable,” asserts a statement issued by the Press Club of India president Gautam Lahiri and secretary general Neeraj Thakur.
Earlier, the Working News Cameraman’s Association had released photographs that showed senior police officers holding some photojournalists by their throats and threatening others with dire consequences.
The photos journalists were covering protests by the supporters of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on March 21.
Ever since, the Aam Aadmi Party workers are out in the Delhi streets demanding Kejriwal’s release.
“It is the job of reporters and photojournalists to cover political protests. As such, photojournalists who were assaulted by Delhi Police were merely doing their job,” the Press Club of India asserts.
The statement says the photographs show some senior police officers grabbing the throat of Arun Thakur of the India Today group “in the most threatening manner.”
Thakur has been in the profession for more than two decades, the statement explains.
Another photojournalist, Salman Ali of Hindustan, fractured his elbow in the melee triggered by Delhi Police, the statement adds.
The club reminds Delhi Police’s “top brass” that press freedom is a fundamental right, which the Supreme Court has underlined on several occasions.
The club quoted the March 12 statement of the Supreme Court bench of Justices A S Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan: “Now, the time has come to enlighten and educate our police machinery on the concept of freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution and the extent of reasonable restraint on their free speech and expression.”
The press club bemoans that the caution of the country’s highest court “seems to have fallen on insensitive ears.”
The club also demanded a high-level enquiry by a retired judge into “the highhandedness of Delhi police so that the aggrieved photojournalists get justice and are able to do their professional work without facing police brutality.”
In the past too, the Delhi police had assaulted journalists and photojournalists in the capital city. Media persons were assaulted by mob and the police during the 2019 protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
In 2018, the Delhi Police roughed up a female photographer from the Hindustan Times during a march to Parliament organized by the students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University to protest against the administration’s policies.
Not done! Not done!! This police assault on photo-journalists is TOTALLY ATROCIOUS and simply UNACCEPTABLE. The police official pictured with his hand at the throat of a photo-journalist must be apprehended and stripped of his post immediately for if this is how he thyinks he can do his job of dancing to his master’s tunes in relation to media professionals, the common man is even unsafer to say the least. The Press Club of India must not stop its protestations unless and unti8l the man concerned, irrespective of his rank, is relieved of his position and put behind bars.
The administration has become a monster in the hands of the government, whether it be at the Centre or the state governments. In Delhi especially the Police is at a loss which master to obey. The attack on media personnel is totally unjustified and the concerned police officers must be summarily taken to task.