Imphal: Journalist Dilwar Hussain Mozumder, a reporter for The CrossCurrent and assistant general secretary of the Guwahati Press Club, was re-arrested by the Guwahati police on Thursday (March 27) evening, moments after securing bail in an earlier case.
Mozumder’s re-arrest came following a complaint filed by Dambaru Saikia, managing director of the Assam Co-operative Apex Bank.
According to the complaint lodged at the Pan Bazar police station on Tuesday, at approximately 12:30 pm Mozumder allegedly entered the bank’s head office unlawfully and attempted to steal important documents. Bank employees raised an alarm, prompting him to flee.
The complaint further alleged that Mozumder disrupted bank operations, threatened employees and made caste-based derogatory remarks toward a security guard from a Scheduled Tribe community.
Based on Saikia’s complaint, a case has been registered invoking Sections 329, 324(4), 351(2), 309(4) and 115 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
Speaking to The Wire, Mozumder’s lawyer A.S. Tapader called the re-arrest “a blatant example of police high-handedness” and an “arbitrary and illegal detention”.
“This alarming trend is turning Assam into a police state, undermining democratic principles. We will strongly challenge this injustice in court,” he added.
Mozumder was detained on Tuesday after he covered a protest at the bank’s office in the Pan Bazar area that took place in response to allegations of a recruitment scam.
Although Saikia has accused Mozumder of entering the bank unlawfully and attempting to steal files, the managing director can be seen in a video clip released by The CrossCurrent asking Mozumder to “come upstairs” to his office to record his statement on the allegations of financial irregularities at the bank.
Also read: Assam Journalist’s Arrest Points to Himanta Biswa Sarma’s Newfound Unease
Following his hours-long detention on Tuesday, Mozumder was arrested late at night.
He was granted bail on Wednesday by local a court in the non-bailable case against him, which invoked the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, but he remained in custody overnight for want of timely payment of his bail bond.
While granting him bail, the court noted that the security guard who Mozumder allegedly insulted “has not stated that the accused had made any derogatory remark to humiliate him or insult him or his community”.
“In this situation, imputing such allegations upon the accused would not be anything less than misusing the law which was created to protect members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes rather than to use it as a tool to arrest people on false grounds,” it continued.
Tapader is set to move the chief judicial magistrate’s court on Friday morning to seek bail for Mozumder in the latest case against him.
Meanwhile, Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, addressing a press conference in Guwahati, stated that the state government does not officially recognise journalists working for web portals or YouTube channels as accredited media professionals.
“The government does not identify Dilwar Hussain as a journalist,” Sarma said. “In Assam, only legacy media – print and television – are officially recognised.”
The chief minister further said that the Department of Information and Public Relations has never granted journalist status to digital media personnel.
“We do not provide registration, advertisements or identity cards to them. As of now, they do not qualify under our definition of journalists,” Sarma stated. “Neither have any of the web portals ever approached us for the same.”
Incidentially, Sarma’s family runs media platforms under Pride East Entertainments Pvt Ltd, which also owns web portals.
He indicated that the government would consult with the Guwahati Press Club to assess whether digital journalists should be officially recognised.
