Dakshina Kannada’s Bantwal police on September 7 arrested and held a reporter of Vartha Bharati, a daily newspaper (Mangalore edition) overnight, without citing a reason for the same.
Friends of Imtiaz Thumbay, who was arrested around 7.00pm, and colleagues from the newspaper went to the police Station to find out the reasons for the arrest. They were unofficially informed by the police that the arrest was made in the context of a report published in the paper on September 3, 2017.
On September 3, Vartha Bharati had carried a report regarding the high handedness and misbehavior of the police team that had entered a house near Bantwal on the pretext of inquiry regarding a suspect in an unresolved murder case. The report was based on the statements given by the members of the family present in the house during the police raid. The District Superintendent of Police had subsequently issued a clarification giving a clean chit to the police personnel involved. On September 4, the statements made by the Superintendent was carried prominently.
So far neither the newspaper nor the reporter have received any notice from the police or any other department regarding the said report. “We consider the arbitrary arrest of our reporter as an act of intimidation, an effort to silence our voice and curtail our freedom of expression and thereby deprive the right of the masses to know the facts,” Abdussalam Puthige, editor-in-chief of the Kannada daily, wrote to Newslaundry.
Thumbay and the chief editor of the newspaper have been charged under Sections 153A and 505 (2) of the Indian Penal Code. After Thumbay’s interim bail was rejected by the Bantwal Court, he was sent to jail.
In his mail Puthige added, “Vartha Bharati had carried a series of special reports and editorials in recent months regarding the failure of police department and the district administration of Dakshina Kannada in maintaining law and order in Bantwal taluk. These reports and editorials were widely acclaimed by the public they had apparently enraged some political parties, political leaders and a few Police officers. We strongly suspect that by arresting Imtiaz these leaders and officers want to intimidate us and force us into silence.”