New Delhi — in a letter to the Press Council of India, Mr. Ghanisham Sign Pasricha, editor, spokesman weekly, has accused the Government of interfering with the freedom of the press by unnecessarily harassing the staff of the weekly.
Mr. Pasricha in his letter said that the Delhi police had registered two cases against his weekly in connection with some articles published in its issues of July 23 and November 19, 1984. These articles dealt with the aftermath of the Army operation in Punjab and the Sikh riots which followed Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
The police, the letter said, claimed that these articles tended to sow discord between Hindus and Sikhs and amounted to sedition. The police had deliberately quoted certain portions of the articles “to suit its designs’’ and had ignored those portions of the articles which gave a balanced view, Mr. Pasricha said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tariq Mustafa Siddiqui, editor and publisher of Char Rang an Urdu monthly published from the Capital, on Monday filed a writ petition in the Delhi High Court challenging the cancellation without reason of his journal’s dispatch number by the post and telegraph department. The petition has been fixed for hearing on Tuesday.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 26, 1985
