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Reporting from strife-torn areas can be tricky as Navbharat Times Senior Reporter Rajesh Saroha found out yesterday when he went to report from the violence-hit area of Trilokpuri in east Delhi. News about Saroha being beaten up by a Station House Officer (SHO) broke on Twitter yesterday when Navbharat Times posted a series of tweets about the incident.

We got in touch with Saroha to find out what really happened and were told that the SHO and other policemen beat him up with lathis without any provocation. “I reached Trilokpuri at about 11:30 am to report on the riots and was stopped by a bunch of policemen at Block 11,” he says.

According to Saroha, the policemen told him that he could not advance since the area was under curfew. “I parked my bike next to them and showed my press card. I was about to leave when another bunch of policemen in a jeep approached us. The SHO sitting in the jeep asked the other men about me and one of them misinformed him that I was trying to enter through the barricade by force. Without hearing me out, they got off the jeep and started beating me with lathis. This continued for almost 10 minutes,” he said.

Saroha, who has been a crime and legal reporter for 14 years knew the Deputy Commissioner of Police (East), Ajay Kumar, of the area and called him once the policemen were done with him. “The DCP came and it was known that the policeman who beat me up was the SHO of Vivek Vihar, Inspector Rakesh Sangwan. He along with the other policemen later apologised but the fact is that they should have heard me out instead of beating me without any reason, I was only doing my job and if they wanted me to leave, they could have just told me instead of cornering me like they did,” says Saroha. Journalists angry with the way Saroha was treated staged protests today outside the Police Headquarters at ITO.

Saroha says Delhi Commissioner of Police, BS Bassi will be meeting him and other journalists tomorrow to discuss the matter. Deepak Mishra, Special Commissioner of Police (Law and Order), stated that he had received a complaint and “will be looking into it”.

According to Saroha, the Delhi Police, it seems, is uncomfortable with journalists coming to Trilokpuri and reporting on the problems the residents have been facing ever since violence first broke out in the area. “There is no curfew in the area, then why have they forced residents to stay locked inside their homes. How can they block individual movement in the area?” he says.

Another journalist from an English daily stated that she felt the police had been trying to mislead her when she was on the ground. “A policeman stopped us from entering Block 20 where the violence seemed to have erupted and told us we needed a ‘curfew pass’. When we went to the local thana to get the pass, we were told we don’t need one since there’s no curfew in the area and that only Section 144 was imposed,” she said, adding that there seemed to be an effort to interfere with her right to report by the men in uniform.

Section 144 or curfew

Many papers and television channels have loosely thrown the word “curfew” around, but in fact Delhi Police has imposed Section 144 in Trilokpuri. Joint Commissioner of Police (Security), Sanjay Beniwal, also confirmed that there was no curfew as such in the area.

Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure only prohibits unlawful assembly of five or more than five people, and does not restrict the movement of individuals in an area. Yet, many reporters confirm that they were asked to show curfew passes when they went to Trilokpuri.

A journalist from a leading English daily says many of his colleagues were asked by the police to show curfew passes. Another stated that though the policemen stationed at Trilokpuri did not overstep boundaries, they “weren’t exactly happy with reporters present”.

Gaurav Shrivastav of ABP News has also been reporting from Trilokpuri, and states that given the fact that there are miscreants in the area, it is normal for the police to create a curfew-like situation to contain violence. Delhi Police’s hyper-vigilance that is interfering with the press’ freedom to report can be understood given the fact that Trilokpuri has had a notorious past of communal violence.

However, Ministry of Home Affairs’ guidelines on communal harmony clearly mention that preventing a riot is more important that containing one. It states that district administration — including SHOs and senior officials at the police station level –should keep a close watch on areas prone to communal violence in light of the “existence of any structures, monuments, etc., around which there may be existing or potential disputes/controversies”.

The Trilokpuri riot appeared to have started around a makeshift Mata Ki Chowki that came up overnight near a mosque. It might have been to everyone’s advantage if Delhi Police had recognised brewing tensions over the chowki that did eventually get out of hand in Trilokpuri. Meanwhile, with Delhi gearing up for re-elections, Trilokpuri continues to remain under close scrutiny by news media and Delhi Police alike.