Last Tuesday, the authorities in Punjab arrested Mr Kuldeep Singh Arora, a UNI correspondent in Amritsar, under the National Security Act. The very next day, a number of organisations of journalists or their office-bearers issued statements condemning the government action as an attack on the freedom of the press and demanding his immediate release. In response to this outcry, a spokesman of the Union Home ministry said on Thursday that Mr Arora was arrested after he had been served with a notice listing specific instances in which he had helped the terrorists. Perhaps the journalists even in Punjab who rushed to Mr Arora’s defence were not aware of this fact. But it is doubtful whether such an awareness would have restrained them from holding the government guilty of trying to throttle the press. Certainly it would not have restrained the irrepressible Janata general secretary, Mr SP Malaviya, who can be depended upon never to miss an opportunity of getting into the columns of newspapers. After all, there is no dearth of good causes he can promote.
Clearly, it is not possible for us to say whether or not Mr Arora is guilty of the charges that the authorities have made against him. If, as we see it, there is nothing in the Punjab government’s record which can lead us to believe that it is out to “terrorize journalists who fearlessly and frankly criticize the wrong policies of those in power” (Mr Malaviya), we cannot ignore the possibility that it may have been misinformed. Authorities do get misled in such cases even if they try to exercise the necessary care. But regardless of whether the charges against Mr Arora are valid or not, we would like to know from fellow journalists how his arrest becomes an attack on the freedom of the press as such. Just because he is a journalist? That would be an extraordinary proposition for anyone to urge, amounting as it would to claim that the journalists are above the law. It could be a somewhat different matter if a plausible case had been made to show that Mr Arora’s work as a journalist could have attracted the ire of the authorities. For in that event, one could at least argue that they could have framed him up unjustly. But no one so far has made such a case. Mr Arora is a correspondent of a news agency. As such he would have been doing straight-forward reporting. This does not exclude the possibility of his reports having annoyed some influential person or persons. But that possibility does not become a fact automatically. It has to be established.