By Jehangir Ali
Srinagar: The Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR), the official PR wing of Jammu and Kashmir government, has threatened legal action against a news portal over its reportage about the detention of a Doda-based activist under the Public Safety Act (PSA).
In a letter (INF/D-45/2024) on Tuesday (November 12), the district information officer (DIO), Doda, warned of legal action against The Chenab Times for publishing a video report about the detention of Rehamatullah, a Doda-based activist who was booked under the PSA, allegedly for raising civic issues.
The warning letter comes days after J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah, who is also the Union Territory’s information minister, assured the media that his government would “not resort to highhandedness” against journalists. Abdullah had also asserted that if the media was “not allowed to function independently …. we will not be able to strengthen democracy.”
The district administration of Doda, which is headed by deputy commissioner (DC) Harvinder Singh, a 2019-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, had warned the media in a Facebook post against “wrong reporting” of the activist’s “detention under security”, adding that it will have “consequences”, but the post was later deleted.
In another post, the administration said Rehamatullah was an “overground worker” of militants and the grounds of his detention were “totally different from what is being circulated on social media”. DC Singh could not be reached for comment.
An independent digital news portal in Doda district of Jammu division, The Chenab Times is registered and affiliated with DIGIPUB, an industry body for independent digital news platforms which has its own complaints review process that is regarded by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as being in conformity with the requirements of the IT Rules, 2021.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
