Lingaram Kodopi has been held without charge since September 2011 and says police forced him to sign blank papers and threatened him with beatings and electric shocks.
UPDATE: Activists protest imprisonment of Indian journalist (CPJ, 10 October 2012)
(CPJ/IFEX) – June 5, 2012 – The following is a CPJ Blog post:
By Madeline Earp/CPJ Senior Asia Research Associate
The New Delhi-based Tehelka magazine published an open letter by imprisoned freelance journalist Lingaram Kodopi on Monday. Kodopi, one of the two journalists CPJ documented in prison in India on December 1, 2011, has been held without charge since September 2011 as a suspected associate of insurgent Maoists in Chhattisgarh. His supporters believe he faces harassment for documenting police violence in the region. Kodopi’s letter records his version of his time in custody, where he says police forced him to sign blank papers and threatened him with beatings and electric shocks. “I am an independent journalist, but my independence has been taken away in jail,” he wrote in the letter.
Kodopi’s aunt, Soni Sori, was also jailed for allegedly helping her nephew accept bribes from a steel company to operate in a Maoist-controlled area–supposed proof of their connection with the banned insurgent group. Tehelka magazine, which has been running a campaign to free Soni Sori, has published a recording of a local constable admitting that police framed the pair on this charge. Yet she, too, remains in prison, where she says she suffered a brutal sexual attack by local officers, Tehelka reported. India’s Supreme Court has ordered a medical examination of her injuries by July 10, according to Tehelka.
