By THE CARAVAN
On 11 August 2020, a mob assaulted three journalists working with The Caravan—Shahid Tantray, Prabhjit Singh and a woman journalist—in northeast Delhi’s Subhash Mohalla neighbourhood. The journalists were subjected to communal slurs and threatened with murder; the woman reporter was sexually harassed. One man who identified himself as “a general secretary” of the Bharatiya Janata Party had launched an attack on our staffers after learning Tantray’s Muslim identity.
The attack on our journalists lasted for an hour and a half. Once the police intervened, the journalists were taken to Bhajanpura police station, where they filed detailed complaints. Our account of the ordeal is available on our website, alongside the detailed complaints from our staffers, and has also been reported widely in national and international media.
Close to four years later, in May 2024, the Bhajanpura police station sent a notice to Prabhjit Singh to join an investigation related to the incident. The notice was pasted to Singh’s former residence. After he contacted the police, we learnt that this was not in relation to our FIR, but one in which the three journalists were named and accused under serious sections such as 354 (outraging the modesty of a woman) and 153A (promoting communal enmity).
We were not given a certified copy of the FIR against our staffers, citing its sensitive nature. We have learnt that the FIR against our staffers was lodged less than an hour before our FIR on the same day in 2020. It is worth noting here that although our complaints were filed on the day of the incident itself, the police did not register our FIR until three days later, on 14 August 2020. The police has informed us that our FIR is being considered a “counter FIR.”
These are shocking and worrying developments. The allegations in the FIR are absolutely false and fabricated. For four years, neither The Caravan nor the named journalists were ever informed of any such FIR.
This story was originally published in caravanmagazine.in. Read the full story here.
