Tamil scribe's arrest condemned

The Editors Guild of India has strongly condemned the arrest of A S Mani, the editor of Tamil magazine ‘Netrikan’, on charges of defaming Union Fertilisers and Chemicals Minister M K Azhagiri, and said that the Tamil Nadu police were “overeager” to arrest him because Azhagiri belongs to the ruling party, the DMK.

The section on criminal defamation is a hangover of the Colonial Raj where editors and journalists were thrown into the prison on the pretext that they had committed criminal defamation, a statement released by the Guild said.