Assam Journalist’s Arrest Signals Alarming Crackdown on Press Freedom in India!

MOHAN KHOUND

The arrest of Dilwar Hussain Mozumder, a digital media journalist and assistant general secretary of the Gauhati Press Club, has triggered a wave of outrage across India and beyond, spotlighting the growing threat to press freedom under Assam’s increasingly repressive administration—and raising urgent questions about democratic erosion nationwide.

Detained late on March 25, 2025, after questioning alleged corruption at the Assam Cooperative Apex Bank Ltd., Mozumder’s case exemplifies how legal mechanisms are being wielded to silence journalists, a trend that imperils the very foundation of India’s free press.

Mozumder was covering a protest outside the bank’s headquarters in Guwahati’s Pan Bazar area, organized by Jatiya Yuva Shakti (JYS), the youth wing of the Assam Jatiya Parishad. The demonstration targeted a purported multi-crore scam involving infrastructure costs and recruitment irregularities at the bank, where Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma serves as a director and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Biswajit Phukan is chairman.

After posing sharp questions to the bank’s managing director, Dambaru Saikia, Mozumder was invited inside the premises, where he later alleged intimidation and the deletion of his recorded footage—a claim echoed by other journalists present.

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Hours later, he was summoned to the Pan Bazar police station, detained without explanation, and arrested after midnight under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act of 1989.

The charges—criminal intimidation and intentional insult to a Scheduled Tribe individual, based on a complaint by an unnamed bank security guard—carry non-bailable provisions, yet their application remains shrouded in ambiguity.

Police assert that Mozumder abused a member of the Bodo tribal community, though the complainant’s identity and connection to the incident remain unclear, given that Saikia does not belong to the Bodo community. Mozumder, a Muslim from a backward minority community, has denied the allegations, with supporters arguing that the charges are a fabricated pretext to punish his critical reporting on the BJP-led government and its affiliates.

The arrest has unleashed a torrent of condemnation from media bodies and civil society. The Press Club of India (PCI), Gauhati Press Club, Assam Women Journalists’ Forum, and Editors Guild of India have decried the detention as a “grave infringement” of press freedom, guaranteed under Article 19(1)(A) of the Indian Constitution.

PCI president Gautam Lahiri and secretary general Neeraj Thakur highlighted the Assam police’s “high-handedness,” noting that Mozumder—a diabetic observing a fast—was denied medicine, food, and access to his lawyer during his nine-hour detention. His wife, arriving with iftaar, was initially barred from seeing him, while journalists waiting outside the station past 1 a.m. were stonewalled on the grounds for his arrest. “This is not law enforcement—it’s intimidation,” Lahiri said.

Protests erupted across Guwahati on March 26, with journalists clashing with police outside the Pan Bazar station and forming human chains at the Gauhati Press Club. “We will not relent until Mozumder is free and press rights are respected,” said club president Sushmita Goswami. The outcry intensified as Mozumder was granted bail later that day, with his release expected on March 27 after procedural delays—a partial relief overshadowed by the chilling precedent his arrest sets.

The incident is not an aberration but a symptom of a broader assault on media freedom in Assam and India. Under Sarma’s tenure since 2021, Assam has seen a surge in arrests of journalists, activists, and critics, often on flimsy or trumped-up charges.

Nationally, India’s press freedom hangs by a thread. Ranked 159th in the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, the country has witnessed a steady rise in journalist harassment, from sedition cases in Uttar Pradesh to preventive detentions in Kashmir.

The misuse of the SC/ST Act, intended to protect marginalized groups, to target reporters like Mozumder—who himself hails from a disadvantaged community—underscores a perverse irony: laws meant to uplift are being twisted to oppress. “This is authoritarianism cloaked as justice,” said Arup Kalita, editor of The CrossCurrent. “They want to break the press because we expose their failures.”

International voices have joined the chorus of concern. Reporters Without Borders called Mozumder’s arrest “a blatant abuse of power,” urging global attention to India’s democratic backsliding. The message is clear: when journalists are gagged, the public’s right to truth is suffocated.

In Assam, where protests against corruption are met with handcuffs rather than accountability, and across India, where dissent is increasingly criminalized, the stakes could not be higher. Mozumder’s case is a rallying cry—a demand not just for his freedom, but for a press unshackled from the chains of oppressive rule.

26-03-2025

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