Gujarat: Three journalists, photojournalist booked for exposing 'VIP treatment to accused' at police station

The Rajkot city police has filed an FIR against three journalists and a photojournalist of a widely read vernacular daily Divya Bhaskar for allegedly exposing "police and other secret works" of a police station and its lock-up as well as hampering the investigation into the case of a fire accident in a hospital that killed five coronavirus patients last week.

The FIR was filed on Friday, two days after the newspaper published a news report with photographs claiming that VIP treatment is given to three accused doctors (of fire accident) and instead of keeping them in the lockup, they are allowed to doze off at D (Detection) staff's room.

These doctors, associated with Uday Shivanand hospital, were arrested days after a fire accident.

The FIR mentions Mahendrasinh Jadeja, crime reporter, Pratipalsinh Gohil, city reporting head, Prakash Rameshbhai, photographer and Imran Hothi, press reporter as accused who have been booked under various sections of Information and Technology Act, 2000, for obstructing public servant in discharging public functions, among other charges.

The FIR has been filed on the basis of a complaint lodged by a constable Jignesh Gadhvi. It says that on December 1, the three doctors, accused in the fire accident, were arrested and brought to the police station. It claims that the accused are kept in the lock-up. For questioning, they have been taken to the D staff's room at the station when two journalists and a photographer, named as accused in the FIR, came to the station.

The FIR says that they clicked the photos of the lock-up despite being warned that such photography or video recording is not permitted inside the police station. It says that the accused didn't heed the warnings. They went inside the D staffs' room despite being warned, and a day later, the newspaper reported with pictures how the accused are not kept in the lock-up and instead allowed to rest on the sofas.

Earlier in May, another journalist had been booked by Vijay Rupani-led BJP government for writing a speculative report on the change of government in the state due to mismanagement of coronavirus pandemic. Recently, the Gujarat High Court quashed the FIR.