Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir administration has withdrawn a restraining order against a Kishtwar-based journalist who was banned for his alleged involvement in a case and was facing trial, officials said.
The Kishtwar District Information Officer (DIO) Kuldeep Kumar, who had issued the ban order on Monday (October 30), issued a fresh order on Tuesday evening saying that the previous one would be kept in abeyance.
Kumar, a Kashmir Administrative Service officer, had on Monday ordered a blanket ban on the journalist, Anshuman Rathore, who works with The Alert, a web-portal registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India.
Citing a police case filed under sections 451 (house trespass) and 506 (criminal intimidation) in 2019 against Rathore at the Kishtwar police station, the DIO stated in his order that “a complete ban” has been imposed on the reporter.
In what seemed to be a case of official overreach, the ban order – a copy of which is with The Wire – said that the reporter, who has not yet been convicted in the case, will not be allowed to perform his professional duties “until such time as he receives exoneration from the Hon’ble court of law”.
In an order on October 27, 2023, the DIO of the Directorate of Information and Public Relations, the official PR wing of J&K’s administration, had asked The Alert to submit the reporters’ “character certificate” in three days.
The news organisation approached the J&K police for information on the reporter. According to a note signed by Kishtwar’s superintendent of police, the reporter was “found involved in the case FIR No. 256/2019 u/s 451/506 IPC (Indian Penal Code).”
“The challan of the case was produced in the Hon’ble court of law vide challan No 233/2019 Dated: 09-11-2020. However, the instant case is still under trial/subjudice before the Hon’ble court of law and is not convicted so far,” the note dated October 19, 2023, states.
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Earlier, an order issued by the Kishtwar district administration on August 28, 2023 had banned Azhar Ali Butt, a resident of Kijai in Kishtwar’s Padder tehsil, from working as a reporter, terming him a threat to “public peace and tranquility”.
Butt, who worked as a freelance reporter with local news outlets, was booked by the J&K police in a case filed for kidnapping and criminal conspiracy at the Kishtwar police station.
Citing the “serious adverse report” of the J&K police, the DC had issued a show-cause notice to Butt, asking “why he may not be banned from any media reporting in the district”.
Later, Butt’s reply to the notice was found “unsatisfactory, evasive and totally incomplete” by the administration.
Without naming Butt, the official order said that “some media persons” working in the district were “indulging… in peddling fake news and maligning the image of government as well as creating hindrance in the smooth run of government works.”
A senior district administration official said that Butt has been “designated as an overground worker” of militants by the J&K police. Invoking section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), the DC had ordered Kishtwar’s senior superintendent of police to implement the ban on Butt for two months “in letter and spirit”.
“If the said tainted media person is allowed to operate unchecked, it may be detrimental to public peace and tranquility and this also vitiates the peaceful atmosphere in the district [sic]. Any deviation of this order shall invite punitive action under rules read with Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code against the violator,” the DC said in the order.
The ban on the journalist of The Alert, which has more than 87,000 followers on Facebook, has caused a fresh stir among local journalists in Kishtwar, who are questioning the administration’s alleged arbitrary use of rules and laws against members of their fraternity.
An official survey puts the number of registered journalists in Kishtwar at 47. According to sources, several journalists working in the hilly district, which falls in the Jammu division, have criminal cases filed against them.
However, barring Rathore and Butt, none of them have been stopped from carrying out their professional duties.
According to legal experts, there is no law or rule that can bar a journalist or any other professional from carrying out their duties if they are booked in a police case and when the case is in the trial stage.
Interestingly, the cases against Rathore and Butt too are also undergoing trial.
“The media owners should check the background of people before hiring them as reporters and photojournalists,” said Imran Shah, a senior journalist in Kishwar who freelances with local and national media organisations.
“The proliferation of social media journalists, who don’t have any professional degrees, has brought a bad name to journalism. It is also the duty of the administration to recognise only those journalists who come from [a] journalism background,” he added.
Since the reading down of Article 370 in August 2019, press freedom has suffered a blow in Jammu and Kashmir, with at least five journalists incarcerated in the Union Territory on terrorism and other charges. Several independent organisations that support press freedom across the globe have called upon the government of India to release these journalists unconditionally.
Free speech activists allege that press freedom has deteriorated over these years and the region has become a difficult place for journalists. Several journalists have been detained by security agencies in connection with their work while some Kashmiri journalists have been prevented from leaving the country.
Note: This article was first published before the order banning Anshuman Rathore was withdrawn. The headline and text were updated subsequently.