New Delhi: After nearly 12 hours of detention, the Assam police after midnight on Wednesday (March 26) arrested senior digital media journalist Dilwar Hussain Mozumder in Guwahati under different charges, including violating the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, his family told The Wire.
Significantly, on Tuesday afternoon, the Assam police had asked Mozumder, chief reporter with the Guwahati-based web portal The CrossCurrent, to report to the city’s Pan Bazar police station as he was covering a protest held by the youth wing of the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) regional party.
The protest was against an alleged recruitment scam in a cooperative bank of which chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is director and BJP MLA Biswajit Phukan its chairman.
Upon his arrival at the police station, a short distance away from the Assam Co-operative Apex Bank – the site of the opposition party’s protest – Mozumder was detained.
Soon after, he said in a Facebook upload that he was detained for asking questions to the bank’s managing director (MD) Dambaru Saikia about the alleged scam.
For some time, Mozumder, an intrepid journalist, has been reporting on the allegations made against the bank’s authorities.
Earlier in the day, amidst slogan-shouting by the protesters, when Saikia arrived at the spot, Mozumder had turned his mic to him. A video clip later issued by The CrossCurrent showed Mozumder asking Saikia to stop so that he could pose a few questions related to the allegations by the protesters.
Saikia could be heard asking Mozumder to instead come upstairs to his office, which Mozumder did along with the cameraperson.
According to Mozumder’s colleagues, Saikia in his office however asked Mozumder to ask the protesters to leave the site.
“Mozumder said he was just a journalist covering the protest – he can’t end any protest – and walked out of the office,” said a colleague at The CrossCurrent.
Arup Kalita, editor of The CrossCurrent, told The Wire, “Strangely, as he was leaving the bank, Mozumder got a call from the Pan Bazar police station, asking him to report at once. On reaching there, he was detained.”
Kalita said, “For nearly twelve hours, he was detained at the police station. His wife was not allowed to enter the police station nor was any colleague or several senior journalists who reached the police station on getting the news. Police refused to state to anyone on what grounds he was detained for so many hours.”
A family member told The Wire that since Mozumder was fasting, his wife reached the station with iftaar but that this was not allowed to be taken to him. Neither were his medicines, which he needs as he is a diabetic.
“Around 11 pm, on the continued insistence of fellow journalists, his wife was finally allowed to go inside and give his medicines.”
Around midnight, a police officer told the waiting family and journalists that he was arrested under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The slip given to the wife, however, did not mention the complainant’s name; neither did it mention where the incident took place.
“It only mentioned a line which Mozumder allegedly had said to a Bodo person,” said the family member.
The sensational arrest of Mozumder, who is also the assistant general secretary of the Guwahati Press Club, has been widely criticised by fellow journalists, civil society activists in Guwahati and opposition party leaders.
Reacting to the police action on March 25 evening, AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi said in a statement that detaining a journalist on duty is not acceptable in a democracy.
“Hussain went to seek the MD’s response. What crime has he done?” Gogoi asked, adding that such acts are an attempt by the chief minister to unleash “Jungle Raj” in Assam.
Assam Pradesh Congress Committee media department chairman Bedabrat Borah too condemned the act, saying, “The freedom of press and freedom of journalists have been attacked.”
Several opposition party leaders also reached the police station and stood with the waiting journalists and Mozumder’s family.
On March 26 morning, the Guwahati Press Club held a protest meeting at its premises, which was attended by a large number of journalists, civil society activists and opposition party members.
Various senior journalists, wearing black badges, spoke against the arrest and demanded his immediate release.
Senior journalist Sushanta Talukdar said, “Dilwar’s biggest crime was that he went to speak to the bank MD so that he could produce a balanced reported copy.”
Another senior journalist, Mrinal Talukdar, who met Mozumder on the morning of March 26, said, “The allegation brought against Dilwar of hurting the sentiments of an unnamed Bodo person is rather laughable.”
Guwahati Press Club president Susmita Goswami and general secretary Sanjay Ray said that if Mozumder was not released by the end of the day, the Club would be forced to chart out a programme for a continuous protest against his detention.
Writer-activist Apurba Baruah said that it is not for the first time that an attack on press freedom had happened in the state. “It has happened before too but as an elder, I advise you to fight it unitedly.”
After the meeting, a large crowd of journalists marched to the Pan Bazar police station where Mozumder is being held.
In a statement issued by the Press Club of India (PCI), Delhi, president Gautam Lahiri and secretary general Niraj Thakur expressed solidarity with the protest held by the Guwahati Press Club against the arrest.
Calling it the Assam police’s “highhandedness”, the statement said it particularly condemned its “refusal to inform his family and his colleagues on what grounds he was detained in the first place.”
“Preventing a journalist from carrying out his official duty is a grave infringement of the freedom of press that is guaranteed under Article 19(1)(a) of the constitution”.
The PCI also urged chief minister Sarma, who is also the state’s home minister, “to look into the matter with all sincerity and ensure that the state police respect the true spirit of the SC/ST Act, while also taking into consideration that there must not be any false charges against a reporter who belongs to a backward, minority community, and was covering a sensitive corruption-related protest as part of his routine job.”
The Editors’ Guild of India said in a statement that “at a time when press freedom is perceived to be under siege across the country, this incident raises serious concerns about media suppression”.
It also called on the Assam government to clarify the circumstances that caused Mozumder’s detention. “At no cost [should] any journalist anywhere … be unjustly held.”
In a statement, the Assam Women’s Journalists’ Forum also condemned “this attack on press freedom” and demanded his immediate release.
“Detaining a journalist for simply doing his job – seeking answers on a matter of public interest – raises serious questions about democratic principles and the state’s treatment of the press,” it said.
The North East Media Forum expressed its solidarity with Mozumder, condemned the police’s actions and called on Sarma to release the journalist.
It also urged the chief minister to “ensure that the state police respect the true spirit of the SC/ST Act and that any false charges are not lodged against the reporter”.
Meanwhile, the state police is likely to present Mozumder before a local court during the day.
However, the police has not yet said what time that would be.
