New Delhi: The Press Council of India has sent a show cause notice to The Caravan, regarding the magazine’s story titled Screams from the Army Post, which was earlier taken down following an order issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
Thereafter, The Caravan had filed a writ petition in the Delhi high court, challenging the I&B Ministry’s order.
“On 1 October, The Caravan received a show-cause notice from the Press Council of India regarding the story Screams from the Army Post. The story, published online and in our February issue of the magazine, is about the torture of numerous civilians by Indian Army personnel in Poonch and Rajouri districts of Jammu and Kashmir on 22 December 2023, in which three persons died as a result of their injuries,” said The Caravan in a statement dated October 15.
The Caravan’s statement added that the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting sent its complaint to the PCI on March 5, well after The Caravan had already taken down the story from its website and removed the URLs listed in the order.
“We are shocked at the PCI’s decision to issue a show-cause notice to us seven months later, where a basic assessment of the complaint would have made clear the MIB’s actions against The Caravan constitutes an act of censorship and the suppression of press freedom. Further, the show cause notice has been issued beyond the period of forty-five days stipulated under Regulation 5 of the Press Council (Procedure for Inquiry) Regulations and is therefore barred by limitation,” says the statement.
“The PCI’s mandate is to protect the freedom of press, and to uphold its right to bring forward stories that are in the interest of the public good. By sending us this show-cause notice, and slapping on alleged violations of norms that do not seem applicable to the report in the first place, the PCI has failed its mandate,” the statement added.
The Caravan said in the statement that it fully stands by its story.
