J&K High Court quashes FIR against senior journalist

Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Thursday quashed an FIR lodged against a senior journalist by then Mehbooba Mufti-led government for his news report about stone-pelting attacks on tourist vehicles that left four tourists injured in April 2018.

The J&K police had filed an FIR against Times of India’s Srinagar correspondent M Saleem Pandit on the basis of a complaint submitted by some local travel agencies who alleged that the news report was “false and written with malicious intention to disrupt the peaceful tourist season” in Kashmir.

Justice Sanjay Dhar of J&K High Court while quashing the FIR observed that the allegations made in the First Information Report (FIR) and the complaint, “even if taken at their face value and accepted in their entirety do not prima facie constitute any offence or make out a case against the petitioner (Salim Pandit).”

“Thus, a continuation of investigation in the subject FIR would account to abuse of process of law….. The present case is fit one where the court should exercise its inherent powers under Section 561-A of the J&K Code of Criminal Procedure, to quash the FIR. Accordingly, the petition is allowed and the impugned FIR is quashed,” Justice Dhar ordered.

Interestingly, just a few weeks after the news report, a 22-year-old tourist from Chennai was killed and two members of his family were injured when their cab was attacked by a group of stone-pelters at Narbal on the Srinagar-Gulmarg highway.