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Journalism of Courage
The case against Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Gilani, who has been arrested under the Official Secrets Act, is getting curiouser. When he had been arrested on June 9, it was for what appeared to be the extremely serious charge of possessing 8216;8216;classified information8217;8217; on Indian troop movements. That this was done in tandem with the booking under Pota of his father-in-law, Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, and the detention of his brother-in-law, Ghulam Hassan, seemed to lend it the flavour of a larger conspiracy against the state.
Before long it became clear that the so-called classified information that was 8216;8216;seized8217;8217; by the police after their search of Iftikhar Gilani8217;s New Delhi residence was nothing more than information that could be routinely accessed through the Internet, possession of which by no means constitutes a crime under any law of the land. Faced with this embarrassment, the Delhi police in a desperate manoeuvre to justify Iftikhar Gilani8217;s detention, now accuses him of distributing and exhibiting pornographic material because his computer, allegedly, had evidence of such material. By this token, half the computer-owning public in this country could be hauled up and placed behind bars, given the wide prevalence of cyber sleaze. So what are we talking about here? Are these policemen or quick change artistes? Serious foot soldiers of the state or old-fashioned dragoons with the licence to intimidate all and sundry? Are we now to see the enactment of a POPA Prevention of Pornography Act, or even a POMA Prevention of Media Act, all the better to lock up hyperactive journalists? Will a government, presided over by those who felt the whiplash of the emergency, now proceed to make the politics of intimidation a cornerstone of state policy?
