Justice
C.K. Prasad
Chairman, Press
Council of India
Soochna
Bhavan, 8 C.G.O. Complex,
Lodhi Road,
New Delhi-110003
Dear Justice
Prasad and other members
I am
writing with reference to an article published by Nai Duniya in its Raipur
edition of November 28, 2018, as well as on the Dainik Jagran on 27th
November 2018, titled “Maovadi karyakarta
Nandini ke khilaf jaanch par Chhattisgarh se report talab”
A copy of
the article in print and on the website is attached for your perusal.
It is completely
false, libelous and defamatory, and contrary to all journalistic principles, to
call me a Maoist karyakarta. A karyakarta means a member or active
worker.
I am a Professor of Sociology at Delhi University, and a petitioner in the
historic Salwa Judum Judgement of 2011 in the Supreme Court where the Supreme
Court banned state support for the Salwa Judum.
The Supreme
Court has itself said that it is aghast to see well-meaning citizens who took
up the cause of human rights called “Maoists”:
“What was doubly
dismaying to us was the repeated insistence, by the respondents, that the only
option for the State was to rule with an iron fist, establish a social order in
which every person is to be treated as suspect, and any one speaking for human
rights of citizens to be deemed as suspect, and a Maoist. In this bleak, and
miasmic world view propounded by the respondents in the instant case, historian
Ramchandra Guha, noted academic Nandini Sundar, civil society leader Swami
Agnivesh, and a former and well reputed bureaucrat, E.A.S. Sarma, were all to
be treated as Maoists, or supporters of Maoists. We must state that we were
aghast at the blindness to constitutional limitations of the State of
Chattisgarh, and some of its advocates, in claiming that any one who questions
the conditions of inhumanity that are rampant in many parts of that state ought
to necessarily be treated as Maoists, or their sympathizers, and yet in the
same breath also claim that it needs the constitutional sanction, under our
Constitution, to perpetrate its policies of ruthless violence against the
people of Chattisgarh to establish a Constitutional order.”
The
NaiDuniya and Dainik Jagran articles are in the context of a petition I filed
in the Supreme Court asking for my name to be dropped from a false and
malicious FIR. The state had itself previously assured the Court that they
would not arrest or investigate on the basis of that FIR. The headline not only
calls me a Maoist karyakarta, but only at the very end notes that the order to
submit a report was on my petition. The newspaper is thus clearly motivated to
spread a defamatory impression about me.
The
hastags are also #Maovadi karyakarta and #Maoist activist Nandini
I
have repeatedly criticized both the Maoists and the Government for human rights
violations and my writings are widely available in public. On no grounds whatsoever
can anyone call me a Maoist karyakarta or Maoist activist.
I would be grateful if the Press Council
took stern action against Nai Duniya and Dainik Jagran and asked them to issue
a front page apology for their defamatory headline, and refrain from such
motivated and malicious reporting in future.
Yours sincerely
Nandini Sundar
