Journalists Bear The Brunt Of Haryana Police Crackdown

Failing to arrest Rampal, cops end up lathi-charging scribes doing their job.

WrittenBy:Arunabh Saikia
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If you thought Indian news channels today would do a Zero Dark Thirty and show you live visuals of a crackdown on a heavily-guarded safe house, you were in for some serious disappointment. It wasn’t the media, though, which screwed up. The culprit this time was the Haryana police, which wanted to ensure that none of its inefficiency made its way to your TV screens. They almost succeeded too, considering they, as eyewitnesses recount, destroyed cameras of almost all news organisations present on location.

Sant Rampal, another of the country’s countless self-proclaimed and self-styled god men, has proved to be elusive to cops for quite sometime now. Following years of cat-and-mouse with the law, Rampal was issued a non-bailable warrant on November 6 and directed to be present in the Punjab and Haryana High Court on November 17. The High Court had instructed the Haryana police to make sure that Rampal was present in court on the designated day. On November 16, the Haryana police, assisted by central forces, tried to arrest Rampal but failed. In an official explanation, Advocate General of Haryana Hawa Singh Hooda stated that the government needed some more time to arrest Rampal as the ashram he was hiding in was surrounded by “belligerent followers from all sides”.The court then gave the Haryana government till Friday to arrest him.

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Following that, the Haryana state police, along with paramilitary forces, stepped up operations. The media, it seems, bore the maximum brunt of it as Rampal continues to stay put inside his ashram.

The media, according to people present there, had been camping near his ashram at Barwala in Hisar district, from as early as 6 in the morning, presumably anticipating action. However, operations started fairly late in the day at around 11. Speaking to Newslaundry, Siddharth Pandey of NDTV, who was present at the spot said, “We were waiting at the last cordon, some 600-700 metres away from the ashram. We requested senior cops present to let us go nearer since we couldn’t film properly from there.”  According to Pandey, journalists were then asked to submit a list with their names and organisations. Eighty-six journalists were then given permission by the Director General of Police himself to go closer to a more convenient place at a “safe distance”.  Pandey said that senior officials had escorted them.

Things, however, got ugly soon. With cops not being able to make many inroads into the ashram, heavily guarded by well-armed followers of Rampal, they turned their attention to journalists. “Suddenly a few constables turned around and started lathi-charging us. While some of us managed fleeing, an engineer with one of the television networks fell into a ditch and was brutally beaten up by five policemen,” said a journalist present.  When journalists tried filming proceedings, cameras were destroyed.

While no one seems to know what provoked the police to come down so heavily on scribes, most eye-witness accounts blame it on the frustration that had started to creep in among the forces who were asked to be careful with women and children acting as a human-shield for Rampal. A reporter with Focus News claimed that the police was upset that  the cameras had captured them lathi-charging women. “All our cameras were destroyed, and they even refused to return our equipment,” he said.

In a press conference later, the Haryana DGP Shriniwas Vashisht vehemently denied that his men intentionally targeted journalists. “We have always considered journalists our allies in Haryana,” he said. Vashisht said that considering the number of women present, the cops exercised extra caution and restraint. Unfortunately, for Vashisht, his men couldn’t break enough cameras – and footage from the remaining ones clearly proves that his force is not only inefficient, but also guilty of misconduct.

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