Jehangir Ali 
Srinagar: The Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR), the official PR wing of Jammu and Kashmir government, has threatened legal action against a news portal over its reportage about the detention of a Doda-based activist under the Public Safety Act (PSA).
In a letter (INF/D-45/2024) on Tuesday (November 12), the district information officer (DIO), Doda, warned of legal action against The Chenab Times for publishing a video report about the detention of Rehamatullah, a Doda-based activist who was booked under the PSA, allegedly for raising civic issues.
The warning letter comes days after J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, who is also the Union Territory’s information minister, assured the media that his government would “not resort to highhandedness” against journalists. Abdullah had also asserted that if the media was “not allowed to function independently …. we will not be able to strengthen democracy.”
The district administration of Doda, which is headed by deputy commissioner (DC) Harvinder Singh, a 2019-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, had warned the media in a Facebook post against “wrong reporting” of the activist’s “detention under security”, adding that it will have “consequences”, but the post was later deleted.
In another post, the administration said Rehamatullah was an “overground worker” of militants and the grounds of his detention were “totally different from what is being circulated on social media”. DC Singh could not be reached for comment.
An independent digital news portal in Doda district of Jammu division, The Chenab Times is registered and affiliated with DIGIPUB, an industry body for independent digital news platforms which has its own complaints review process that is regarded by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as being in conformity with the requirements of the IT Rules, 2021.
The video report, which had garnered more than 18,700 views and 44 comments when this story went live, was produced by Raja Shakeel, a reporter with The Chenab Times, and published on its Facebook page on Monday (November 11).
In the nearly 16-minute-long video, Shakeel reported that Rehamatullah had been booked under the PSA for the second time and that his detention was also condemned by Mehraj Malik, an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and a newly elected MLA from Doda constituency.
“In two out of five cases in the PSA dossier, police blamed Rehamatullah for speaking against the country,” Shakeel said, “But legal experts argue that the same cases which have been used to book a person under PSA for the first time can’t be used to detain him again under the PSA if the first PSA has been quashed by court”.
Rehamatullah was slapped with PSA, which has been termed as a “lawless law” by Amnesty International, in 2016. However, the charges were quashed by the J&K high court in 2017.
The Chenab Times report also included a telephonic conversation with Fayaz Ahmad, Rehamatullah’s brother, who can be heard saying that he was not present at his home when his brother was detained in the wee hours of Sunday.
“My brother has been harassed by the district administration and security agencies since 2016, even though the courts have given him bail in all the cases,” Ahmad told the news portal, terming the DC Singh’s claim that his brother was an “overground worker” of militants as “jumlabazi (wordplay)”.
“His only crime is that he speaks for the poor. The municipality dumps garbage near our home which has become a nuisance for the entire neighbourhood. He had been raising this issue lately, which is why he was targeted,” he added.
“There are no serious charges pending against him. The PSA dossier accuses him of using VPN to speak with militants but there is no proof to back this claim. Is it fair to detain a person without evidence?” the reporter asked, as the screen cut to a tweet advocating “impartial judicial or legal review committee” for examining the PSA cases in J&K.
However, seeking to blame the portal for questioning the official claims, an ethical obligation of journalists, the DIO’s letter alleged that the “tone and content” of the report projected the “administrative procedure in bad light and empathised with the person who has been booked .. by following due process of law”.
“In the said video you have tried to prejudice the due process of law thus creating a potential law and order issue. You have interpreted the action of administration as per your convenience which has created rumours in general public,” the letter said.
Speaking with The Wire, Anzer Ayoob, editor of The Chenab Times, said that instead of addressing the concerns raised by their journalist through his report, the administration has “questioned the validity of our organisation’s registration, which amounts to harassment.”
“We have been repeatedly directed to submit registration and other authorisation documents by the Doda administration and we have complied with these orders every time. There is no question regarding the legality of our organisation. The government should focus on addressing the questions raised in the report,” Ayoob said.
The Chenab Times’ editor was asked to submit his response to the DIO’s letter by 11 am on Wednesday.
Ayoob said that his portal was “fully aware of the ethical standards outlined in the IT Act, 2000, and the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which are essential for the lawful and ethical operation of digital news portals” in the country.
“We consistently uphold these principles, striving to deliver content that is factually accurate, impartial and fair. The video report presented the points of view of both the district administration as well as the family of the detainee. Nowhere does the report interpret the action (of the administration) in a bad light,” he said.
“Stating the circumstances around a person’s detention doesn’t mean we empathise with the detainee. Reporting facts does not equate taking sides or showing sympathy,” Ayoob added.
The original article erroneously mentioned that The Chenab Times had reported that Rehamatullah was cleared of charges in two cases. The reference has been removed and the error is regretted.