Over 3,500 jurists, academics, actors, artists, writers and people from other walks of life in India and abroad have endorsed a statement expressing shock at the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to file criminal charges against The Wire news portal and one of its founding editors, Siddharth Varadarajan, for an article on Covid-19 and religious events, calling it a direct attack on freedom of the media.
The signatories to the statement have urged the Yogi Adityanath government to withdraw the FIR against Varadarajan and the news portal, and drop all criminal proceedings.
They have also urged the central government and all state governments not to use the pandemic as a ruse to trample upon media freedom, pointing out that a medical emergency should not serve as the pretext for the imposition of a de facto political emergency.
“This attack on media freedom, especially during the Covid-19 crises, endangers not just free speech, but also the public’s right to information,” the statement says, reflecting also on the communalisation of the pandemic.
The media, they added, should not communalise the pandemic.
The signatories include former Supreme Court judge Madan B. Lokur; two former Chiefs of Naval Staff, L. Ramdas and Vishnu Bhagwat; former Union finance and external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha; former national security adviser Shivshankar Menon; and former chief election commissioner M.S. Gill.
From the worlds of literature and films, the signatories include Vikram Seth, Nayantara Sahgal, Arundhati Roy, Amol Palekar, Naseeruddin Shah, Nandita Das, Farhan Akhtar, Zoya Akhtar, Kiran Rao and Anand Patwardhan.
Also, over 1,000 professors from universities across the globe and various disciplines have signed the plea, including Naresh Dadhich of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics; T.R. Govindarajan of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai; Sheldon Pollock, Columbia University; Kaushik Basu, Cornell University; Arjun Appadurai, New York University; Ganesh Devy; historian Ramachandra Guha; and David Shulman, Hebrew University.
Besides, a large number of journalists and concerned citizens from across India and abroad have endorsed the demands.
