Two women journalists detained while covering the recent violence in Tripura have been granted bail by the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Court in the Gomati district of the state. Sammriddhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha were reporting on the vandalism at a mosque in the state when they were detained in Assam on Sunday after a case was filed against them by the Tripura police for ‘spreading communal disharmony’
Both the journalists have accused the police of ‘intimidation’.
Following the detention of the journalists, the Editors Guild of India had denounced the police action and demanded their immediate release and ‘restoration of their freedom to travel’.
Advocate Pijush Biswas while presenting his arguments for the bail asserted that there was no evidence that they spread communal violence.
“The charges made against the journalists are completely baseless. Police filed the case with mala fide intention,” he argued while further saying that his clients will move the Supreme Court to quash the case.
Sakunia and Jha are journalists with HW News Network and were detained in Assam’s Karimganj on Sunday. They were brought to Tripura on transit remand for production before the magistrate’s court in Udaipur, 50 km from state capital of Agartala.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court said that while the offences are ‘serious in nature’, from the evidence on record, it appears that is not necessary to detain the accused in police custody. Doing so, the court said, “would be extreme curtailment of personal liberty”.
