‘The Hindu’ calls for dropping FIR against journalist for allegedly possessing confidential papers

The Hindu has urged the Gujarat Police to drop charges of allegedly possessing confidential documents against its Ahmedabad correspondent Mahesh Langa.

Suresh Nambath, the editor of the newspaper, said that filing such cases against reporters undermines their journalistic work and fundamental rights.

On October 22, the Gujarat Police registered a first information report against Langa for allegedly possessing confidential government documents about the Gujarat Maritime Board. The case was filed when the journalist was already in judicial custody in an alleged Goods and Services Tax-related scam.

Nambath on Saturday said that journalists, in the line of their work, are required to process documents, including those of a confidential nature. “They are guided by the larger public interest in perusing documents that are official or confidential,” he said in a series of posts on X.

Nambath also described as “completely unacceptable” the statement of District Superintendent of Police Ravi Teja Vasamsetty that the online first information report was not accessible to the public as it had been put under the "sensitive" category.

To file charges against them for possession of such documents is to undermine their journalistic work and their fundamental rights and to subvert the public interest. We urge the Gujarat police to drop the charges relating to the possession of classified documents against...

Read more