Reporters Without Borders (RSF) calls for the immediate withdrawal of sedition proceedings against a 50-year-old Indian newspaper editor, who is facing a possible life sentence for sharing a satirical cartoon on Facebook that has been deemed “anti-national.” The case is an abuse of the law, RSF says.
Kamal Shukla, the editor of the Bhumkal Samachar newspaper in the east-central state of Chhattisgarh, has dedicated his career as journalist to defending press freedom, human rights and the Adivasi ethnic minority, and has often been the target of libel suits in connection with his work.
But, when he clicked the share button on a cartoon he saw on Facebook on 19 April, he clearly did not expect to be charged ten days later under India’s sedition law – article 124 (A) of the penal code – under which “whoever by words, either spoken or written or by signs, or by visible representation (…) excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government (…) shall be punished with imprisonment for life.”
The cartoon referred to the Indian supreme court’s refusal to order an independent investigation into the suspicious death in 2014 of a judge who had been hearing a trial involving the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s president, Amit Shah, who is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-hand man.
