Journalist interviewedFiling cases is a pernicious method to disturb honest journalists, and harass and chase them. It is a tactic to wear them down and strain their resources and time.
Journalists and charges
423 criminal cases. 427 journalists charged. 624 times journalists faced criminal charges for their work. This project sheds light on the profiles of the journalists who faced these cases, the offences they were most likely to be charged with and why, and their experiences of the criminal justice system.
Journalist interviewedThere is no enquiry into the scam exposed by the journalist, but the narrative shifts to 'how the journalist obtained this information' and 'why he is writing about it' to create panic or enmity.
Charged for reporting on...
Journalists faced charges most frequently for reporting on: public officials, religious issues, and protests, followed by corruption and COVID-19.
Journalist interviewedThe problem is that when the lights go off [in prison], that’s when the dilemma comes, the dark thoughts come. Until and unless I slept, I kept endlessly thinking of family, friends, my job, when do I get out of here and what do I do once I get out.
Arrest and pretrial detention
A criminal case in India starts with State Police registering a First Information Report (FIR). This sets into motion the criminal process – the investigation that follows could involve seizure of devices, repeated summonses, and most concerningly arrests and pretrial detention. Journalists’ experience is shaped significantly by their access to justice.
Journalist interviewedIf my case would have been in Delhi, then I am sure I would have been out in a week or two.
Endless delays
Whether in detention or not, the period between an FIR and a final outcome impacts journalists in countless ways. Most journalists in the dataset were caught in this limbo for years on end. The result? The “process is the punishment” for journalists facing criminal cases across the Indian States.
An analysis of 45 cases registered between 2012-2020 with definitive data on the date of FIR and case status as of October 2023 gives a sense of how long-drawn-out criminal proceedings can be.
Journalist interviewedI was constantly worried and feeling trapped, despite not doing anything wrong. This situation led me to shift from journalism to business. The constant stress made it hard to focus on anything else.
Impact on journalists
48 journalists, representing a broad cross-section of those in the dataset, shared their experiences in long-form interviews. They talked about the impact the cases had on many aspects of their lives.
The impacts also extend beyond individual journalists: These cases create a chilling effect and reduce the ability of India’s journalists to serve as the citizenry’s ‘eyes and ears’ across the country, including in smaller towns.
Report Download & Data Exploration
Download the report – Pressing Charges: A study of criminal cases against journalists across states in India – for the detailed methodology and findings.
For a more detailed exploration of the data, visit our Data Exploration page.
48 journalists were interviewed for this project. The quotes on this website are from these interviews.
Some cases implicated multiple journalists, while some journalists were implicated in multiple cases- therefore each “time” a journalist faced a criminal case was recorded as a separate incident
Since there were over 200 offences in the dataset, they were bucketed into categories, based on their definition and chapters in the Indian Penal Code. The specific offences included in each category can be seen in the Data Exploration page.
Two forms of protection from arrest was analysed: Anticipatory bail (a court order directing release of a person on bail, even before they are arrested) and interim protection (court order to not arrest the accused, while the court decides a petition seeking anticipatory bail or quashing of the FIR).
In 7 of these 46 incidents the case is known to have been completed, but without a known end date. These are represented on the chart above as a blue line without an end marker; the length of the line is based on the average time from FIR to case completion for cases with a known completion date.