Journalists Facing Harassment and Detention

First of all, greetings to all of you. We know that you

kept saying that we had press cards in our hands. These are our press cards.

And after assaulting them, Caravan and The Quint journalists were

forcibly detained. They were kept in detention for hours,

despite knowing that they had press cards in their hands.

We saw how cameras were snatched away from journalists

and they were told they would not get their cameras back if they covered this.

And yesterday, shockingly, we saw that a

journalist covering the news was sexually

harassed by Vivek Bhagat. When she went to file an FIR,

we learned yesterday that a counter-FIR

had been filed against her. And what has happened in this country is that

when ordinary people approach the police to appeal for justice,

instead of maintaining law and order, the police

support a particular political party

while supporting them, cracks down on the public itself

does. This is a classic example of what we have been seeing in this

country for so long. We salute all of you because

even as you are being beaten, the police damages your equipment worth hundreds of thousands

of rupees. Despite this,

you stand with us on the streets to show the truth.

We know you stand there because you understand that

the job of journalism in any era is to show whatever is going

on. It is not to follow the dictates of any political party.

People who follow the dictates of political parties

keep shouting from their studios, while those who do not take their bylines

from the headquarters in Nagpur struggle on the streets. We salute all of you.

We

will, begin with this. There is a Hindi poem.

Its name is

Rashmirathi.

That.