Two women journalists who were booked after they accused the Tripura police of “intimidation” have been granted bail by the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Court in Tripura’s Gomati district.
On Sunday, Sammriddhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha who were covering the recent violence in the state were detained in Assam after a case was filed against them by the Tripura police for “spreading communal disharmony” following their reportage on the vandalism at a mosque in the state.
Denouncing police action against the journalists, the Editors Guild of India had demanded their immediate release and “restoration of their freedom to travel”.
HW News Network journalists Sakunia and Jha were detained in Assam’s Karimganj. On Monday, they were brought to Tripura on transit remand for production before the magistrate’s court in Udaipur.
The Tripura police, in a statement, had said that the case involved a tweet by Samriddhi Sakunia, who visited a half-burnt prayer hall at a private house where claims were made of a Quran being burnt. A press release issued by the office of Tripura police chief VS Yadav claimed that the posts by the journalist were not true and promoted a sense of hatred between communities.
The police further said they found no religious document was burnt and both the journalists were asked to come to Agartala for questioning. However, they were detained after they were found to have left the state.
Tripura police suspect that the videos uploaded by them are doctored. In a tweet on November 11, Samriddhi Sakunia had written, “#Tripuraviolence Darga Bazaar: On 19th October at around 2:30 am, some unidentified people burnt down the mosque in Darga Bazaar area. People in the neighborhood are very upset with the fact that now they don’t have any place nearby to go and pray. There’s no other masjid nearby.”
Talking to NDTV, the two journalists said that they were detained by the Tripura police while on their way to the airport. After three-and-half hours at the police station, the escort team from Tripura came. “We asked them to wait, saying our lawyer is on way. But they loudly said, ‘no one is coming’. They also did not show us a copy of the order,” they said.
Accusing the police of “intimidating” them on Sunday morning, the journalists said they were not allowed to leave the hotel and move to Agartala.
The HW News Network in an official statement said the detention took place “despite the police allowing them to leave the hotel and giving them a week’s time to record a statement… This is sheer harassment and targetting of the press on part of Tripura police”.
Last week, tweets went viral on social media alleging that a mosque has been vandalised in Tripura during a rally by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Issuing a strong denial, the union home ministry saidthe reports were fake and “complete misrepresentation of facts”. The mosque in Dargabazar area has not been damaged. But the fake news has been followed by reports of protests and violence in Maharashtra, it said.
Tripura police had asked Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to provide details of more than a hundred accounts from which the posts were allegedly shared.
The police have lodged five cases against 71 people, along with Supreme Court lawyers, activists, and religious campaigners for the posts.