CHANDIGARH: The Chandigarh Police has registered criminal cases in charges of sedition under the terrorist and disruptive activities (prevention) act (TADA) against the Sikh religious body the Panthic Committee the English daily The Times of India and a Punjabi daily Ajit for circulating and publishing respectively a statement of the militants on Wednesday.

The Panthic Committee had recently issued a code of conduct for the media with a thinly veiled warning that non-compliance would invite retaliation.

These are the first cases registered by the Chandigarh administration after it imposed a blanket ban on printing objectionable material authorised the police to raid and seize such material and made the violation of the order actionable under law.

Meanwhile the advisor to the administrator of the union territory of Chandigarh Baleshwar Rai said that the administration had not imposed any press censorship and only made publication of objectionable material actionable under the law.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 25, 1991