Manipur govt files FIR against Editors Guild for report on violence
The case has been filed against authors Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan and Sanjay Kapoor who went to Manipur and the Guild president, Seema Mustafa
The Manipur Police have filed a case against three members of an Editors Guild of India fact-finding team on charges of releasing a “false, fabricated and sponsored” report on ethnic violence in the state.
The police have invoked Section 66A of the Information and Technology Act although the Supreme Court has axed this provision and said that no one should be prosecution under this section.
Section 66A gave the government power to arrest and jail an individual for “offensive and menacing” online posts.
Also read: Manipur govt played partisan role in ethnic conflict, says Editors Guild report
The case has been filed against the authors of the report who travelled to Manipur – Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan and Sanjay Kapoor – on a crowd-funded project and the president of the Editors Guild, Seema Mustafa.
'False caption'
The police complaint alleged that a photo in the report falsely claimed to show smoke rising from a Kuki home when it was the office of a forest official. The complaint said on this account itself, it was obvious that the report was false and was “sponsored by Kuki militants”.
Imphal-based social worker N Sarat Singh filed the FIR against the three journalists who visited Manipur from August 7 to 10.
The Editors Guild report released on Saturday said there were clear indications that the leadership of the state turned partisan in the conflict involving primarily Meiteis and Kukis, the two dominant communities in Manipur.
"It should have avoided taking sides in the ethnic conflict, but it failed to do its duty as a democratic government which should have represented the entire state," the report said among several other observations.
Guild admission
The Editors Guild on Sunday admitted that the photo was wrongly captioned and said this was "being rectified and an updated report will be uploaded shortly”.
"The state government seems to have facilitated the majority's anger against the Kukis through several seemingly partisan statements and policy measures," the report added.
The social worker in the FIR alleged that the Editors Guild report has not mentioned key facts about large-scale illegal immigration to Manipur that allegedly threatened the indigenous people with a demographic change.
The report faulted Imphal valley-based media as being biased in favour of the Meitei community, media reports said.
In response, the All Manipur Working Journalists Union and the Editors Guild Manipur said they have taken strong exception to the "half-baked so-called fact-finding report, which was completed in merely four days".
