(RSF/IFEX) – Journalist Kumar Badal, of the investigative website Tehelka.com, has gone on a hunger strike to protest his continued imprisonment. Badar has been detained for more than one month. On 16 August 2002, RSF joined those in India who are speaking out against the government’s policy of intimidating the investigative press. In a letter […]
(RSF/IFEX) – Journalist Kumar Badal, of the investigative website Tehelka.com, has gone on a hunger strike to protest his continued imprisonment. Badar has been detained for more than one month. On 16 August 2002, RSF joined those in India who are speaking out against the government’s policy of intimidating the investigative press.
In a letter to Interior Minister Lal Krishna Advani, RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard recalled that he had already written to him on 27 June to protest a search of Tehelka.com’s offices. “The arrest of two of the website’s journalists in the past month constitutes a further stage in the harassment of this independent press site. We ask that you have this intimidation brought to an end and that you drop the legal action against these journalists,” Ménard said.
In addition to requesting Badal’s release, RSF also recalled the case of Iftikhar Gilani, the “Kashmir Times”‘ bureau chief in New Delhi. He has been detained since 9 June for allegedly violating the country’s Official Secrets Act (see IFEX alerts of 26 July and 11 June 2002).
Badal has been held since 3 July. He started his hunger strike on 5 August. In a letter published on the Tehelka.com website, he wrote, “The only reason I am suffering in this manner is because I am a journalist from Tehelka.com, which [exposes] the corruption that [is present at] the highest state levels.” Badal said he would continue his hunger strike “no matter what,” until a judicial decision was taken in his case. “The jail authorities have already started to persuade me to drop my idea. But you cannot keep a journalist quiet – even in a jail.”
The Criminal Bureau of Investigation (CBI) accuses Badal, aged 29 and the father of a four-month-old baby, of having hired poachers to kill leopards belonging to a protected species in the Saharanpur jungle, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, and film the experience. The journalist has claimed his innocence from the outset. Since his arrest, he has been subjected to various forms of mistreatment. On the first day of his detention, he was allegedly obliged to undress for a body search in front of a dozen prison guards and dozens of inmates, most of whom laughed as they watched. He is being held in a prison wing intended to house 60 inmates, but which currently holds more than 250 detainees in insalubrious conditions.
Various factors suggest that the CBI was asked by the government to create difficulties for Tehelka.com, which exposed a major corruption scandal within the government in 2001. Another Tehelka.com journalist has been detained in the past month. Aniruddha Bahal, who heads the website’s investigative team, was arrested on 7 August following the filing of a complaint by a CBI officer who accused him of having “threatened” him. He was released on bail that same day.
