Several reporters who faced harassment and detention while covering protests in New Delhi over the last few days came out on Tuesday to share their ordeal, expressing concern over a “dangerous trend where the police decide who is a journalist and who is not”.
They also joined a silent protest march against attacks on journalists. The event, organised by the Press Club of India, condemned the attacks and detentions.
Dozens of journalists were detained by the police in the last few days when they were covering protests against chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Sharing the ordeal they went through while being detained by the Delhi Police, many alleged that the cops denied them an opportunity to identify themselves as journalists and later manhandled them.
“A policeman deciding who a journalist is and who is not — I think that’s really dangerous for journalism,” Newslaundry journalist Astha said while recounting how the police picked her up along with her colleague Anmol Pritam when they were covering the protests.
Astha alleged that a man standing behind her inappropriately touched her inside the bus the police had bundled her into after her detention. When she resisted and shouted, the man ran away. “He was not seen in the bus thereafter,” she said, asking how the police planned to ensure the safety of women inside detention vehicles.
Concern over identification of journalists was expressed by Press Club president Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty, who hosted the public meeting as an exercise to “document what should not be done to journalists in a democracy”.
“How can the State or the police decide who is a journalist? That is one of the biggest worries,” she said, expressing concern over journalists being asked to show their Press Information Bureau card, which is required to enter the ministries.
“This is a strange phenomenon,” she said. Several journalists were asked to show PIB cards while covering the protests this time.
Ryan Thomas, who works for The Caravan, said he was picked up by the police while filming a detention at Connaught Place on October 11.
“I heard one policeman say that he has to go home because he is tired and wants to go to his family members. When I requested them to let me go, the policeman said, ‘Don’t try to equalise yourself with me. You are not equal to me,’” Thomas said.
Thomas also told reporters that he was slapped when the policeman came to know his name. He alleged that the policeman punched him and asked other personnel to “pull out the rifle, as only that would work for him”.
BBC journalist Dilnawaj Pasha, who was heckled by Right-wing social media influencers while covering the protests, thanked his “support system” friends for standing by him. He, however, expressed concern for several independent journalists who don’t have any backing and faced difficulties covering the protests.
Scroll journalist Shoaib Daniyal said he was picked up by the police 20km from Lutyens’ Delhi. “They picked me up in a bus. They kept me for an hour. They did not know what to do with me. They threatened me, tried to heckle me and tried to get me to delete videos of my detention. I did not,” Daniyal said.