Lawfare, Summons/Notices – Journalists

In a joint statement, people from different walks of life including former Supreme Court judge Madan B Lokur, former Madras High Court judge K Chandru and former Patna High Court judge Anjana Prakash protested against the Uttar Pradesh Government’s move on April 14. The FIR was filed against Siddharth Varadarajan for his alleged ‘defamatory’ comments against the UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath that appeared in The Wire.

The protests followed the serving of a notice on April 10 to the Wire’s editor Siddharth Varadarajan, requesting he appear in Ayodhya Police station on April 14. In response to the police notice, Varadarajan tweeted on 13 April that could not appear at the Ayodhya police station, 700 km from his home in Delhi, due to the nation-wide Covid-19 lockdown.

The FIR, filed by Nitish Kumar Shrivastav, a resident of Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh, alleges Varadarajan had made an “objectionable” comment about Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath.