Ghazanfar Abbas, IndiaTomorrow.net,
New Delhi, Oct 29: Condemning the way senior journalist Vinod Verma was arrested by Chhattisgarh police, many senior journalists have criticized the BJP government led by Chief Minister Raman Singh and demanded Verma’s immediate release. Holding a protest meeting at the Press Club of India here on Saturday they demanded the Chhattisgarh Police to exhibit evidence against Verma who has been arrested on charges of extortion allegedly over a “sex CD” of a state Minister.
“Chhattisgarh police should immediately furnish the evidence of extortion for which Vinod Verma has been accused by them. A letter from Press Council of India and Editors Guild of India should be sent to the government of Chhattisgarh urging it to make public the evidence it has against journalist Vinod and in the absence of that he should be released forthwith. If this demand of ours is not met by the government we must move the court,” said Vinod Sharma, Political Editor of Hindustan Times.
“This is not the way a government protects and defends the freedom of speech,” he averred.
Journalist Verma was arrested by the Chhattisgarh Police in Ghaziabad early on Friday on charges of allegedly blackmailing a BJP minister in Chhattisgarh. Verma has denied the charge and said he was being framed.
Strongly criticizing the state BJP government senior journalist Urmilesh Urmil said that Vinod Verma has been targeted because he has exposed anti-journalists policy being executed in Chhattisgarh.
“I am openly naming that Raman Singh government has not just suppressed Dalits, Adivasis and rivals but also crossed all limits in suppressing journalists in Chhattisgarh. It has targeted Vinod because the Editors Guild report had exposed the tools against journalists. And his arrest is pre-planned to defame him,” Urmil furiously said.
Telling about the possible reason behind Verma’s arrest Urmil said: “In 2016 Editors Guild of India had sent a team including its Secretary General Prakash Dubey, senior journalist Seema Chishti and journalist Verma to investigate what journalists were facing in Chhattisgarh. In that report, most of the input was given by Verma. That report was widely discussed in the media and put the state government in trouble.”
“At that time this report of Editors Guild gave a complete detail. Somaru Nag, a Bastar based tribal journalist, was arrested in July 2015. Malini Subramaniam, who used to write for Scroll, was terrorized along with her family and stones were pelted on her house. She had to flee Chhattisgarh to save her life. Santosh Yadav, who was also arrested in 2015, finally got freed after getting bail from the Supreme Court,” he told.
“Today if any journalist criticizes the government he/she is branded as a person of Congress, Communist party or AAP. This is the need of intellectual tolerance that we all should consider ourselves as journalists first despite having different ideologies. We have entered in a dangerous phase now,” he warned.
Veteran journalist Om Thanvi, Jai Shankar Gupta, President of Press Association, Gautam Lahiri, President of Press Council of India, R Vinay Kumar, Secretary General of PCI, BBC journalist Ram Sharan Joshi, and veteran journalist Rahul Jalai also featured at the protest meeting.
Terming Verma’s arrest as an “attempt to threaten” other journalists, Om Thanvi said, “Vinod has been arrested like a hard criminal. If he has committed any crime police should do the investigation but whatever has come on the surface, it is obvious that he is being framed. What Rajasthan government is doing by wearing gloves, Raman Singh government is doing the same by removing the gloves.”
Meanwhile, under press after Vinod Verma’s arrest, the Chhattisgarh government has reportedly sought a CBI probe into the ‘sex CD’ case.
