Guwahati: The Press Club of India (PCI) backed the Guwahati Press Club and condemned the arrest of Dilawar Hussain Mozumder post-midnight on Wednesday by Assam Police.
PCI stated that the police did not cite the complainant’s name or specify where exactly the incident took place.
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Police in Guwahati detained journalist Dilawar Hussain Mozumder at the Pan Bazar police station on Tuesday afternoon. After detaining for eight hours, they arrested him at midnight.
The Press Club of India (PCI) condemned the police’s highhandedness, especially for refusing to inform Mozumder’s family and colleagues about the grounds for his detention.
The PCI stated that preventing a journalist from performing his official duties seriously violates the freedom of the press guaranteed by Article 19 (1) (A) of the Constitution.
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The Assam Police summoned Mozumder while he was covering a protest organized by a sister organization of the regional party, Assam Jatiya Parishad.
Protesters organized a demonstration against an alleged multi-crore scam in the bank’s recruitment process. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma reportedly serves as the bank’s director, and the chairman is Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Biswajit Phukan.
“When the Bank’s managing director Dambaru Saikia arrived at the scene, Mozumder approached him for a news byte and asked him if he could stop there to reply to his questions. Saikia could be heard on camera asking him to come to his office upstairs instead, which Mozumder did,” the statement said.
After he left the bank, the Pan Bazar Police Station called him and asked him to report, leading to his subsequent detention.
The news about detaining Mozumder spread after he posted about the incident on his Facebook after reaching the police station.
In the Facebook post, Mozumder said that police detained him for asking questions to the bank MD about the alleged scam.
Several senior journalists and reporters from the city, along with his lawyer, reached the police station, but the police did not allow them to meet Mozumder.
The PCI alleged that Mozumder was fasting, so his wife brought Iftar to the police station in the early evening, but they refused it. Police also did not permit Mozumder to take his medicine for diabetes.
PCI called the Assam government and Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma to look into the matter with all sincerity and ensure that the police respect the true spirit of the law.
The PCI statement asked him to take into consideration that there must not be any false charges against Mozumder, who belongs to a backward, minority community, and was covering a sensitive corruption-related protest as part of his routine job.