Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh has announced that his administration has filed a FIR against the Editors Guild of India’s president and three other members, accusing them of attempting to incite fresh conflicts in the state, which has been built by ethnic unrest for nearly four months.
The fact-finding team from the Editors’ Guild of India (EGI), which visited Manipur and produced a report on media coverage of the ethnic strife, has been accused of violating the law by the Manipur police. The FIR makes reference to Section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act, which the Supreme Court invalidated in 2015. The court has repeatedly ordered that no one should be penalised for violating the clause.
In relation to a report the Editors Guild of India released on Saturday, the Manipur Police have filed a complaint against three members of the fact-finding team and the president of the press body.
The government has the right to detain and arrest someone for making “offensive and menacing” internet posts under Section 66A.
Along with Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act (criminal misconduct by a public servant), the police have also cited provisions of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to injuring or defiling a place of worship, uttering words with the intent to offend religious sentiments, and making statements conducive to public mischief.
FIR against the members of the Editors’ Guild in Manipur
“The state government has filed an FIR against the members of the Editors’ Guild for trying to create more clashes in the state of Manipur,” Chief Minister N. Biren Singh said.
The case has been brought against the report’s writers, Seema Guha, Bharat Bhushan, and Sanjay Kapoor, as well as Seema Mustafa, president of the Editors Guild of India.
The report was described as “false, fabricated [and] sponsored” in the complaint.
The FIR refers to one photo caption in the report and is based on a complaint made by one Ngangom Sarat, a “social worker” who resides in Imphal West. The caption, according to the complaint, claimed that smoke was coming from a Kuki home, although it was actually a forest official’s residence. The complainant came to the conclusion that the story was “sponsored by Kuki militants” and that it was entirely untrue as a result.
The Editor’s Guild had noticed the caption issue and had posted on X (previously Twitter), “We regret the error that crept in at the photo editing stage.”
The Manipur Police had also filed a complaint in July against three members of a fact-finding team who had referred to the state’s violence as “state-sponsored.” Three women—Annie Raja, Nisha Siddhu, and Deeksha Dwivedi—had been named in the initial information report.
While Dwivedi practises law in Delhi, Raja and Siddhu are connected to the National Federation of Indian Women, the CPI’s female arm. They have been accused of waging war against the state, provocations, and defamation in accordance with several provisions of the Indian Penal Code.
According to the report , local journalism from areas with a high Kuki population, such as Churachandpur, Kangpokpi, and Tengnoupal, vanished in the days following the conflicts.
Additionally, the Editors Guild identified over ten occasions where it discovered that the media had reported false material and deception.
The report stated, “It is now visible that the ethnic divide deepened progressively through fake news, which finds space only in Imphal media.”
The three-member fact-finding team also noted that it was challenging to report from Manipur because of the state’s internet ban, which was put in place at the beginning of May, during the Meitei-Kuki dispute.
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