Delhi Journalist Prashant Kanojia ordered to be immediately released by the Supreme Court

New Delhi: Journalist Prashant Kanojia who was under arrest and put behind the bars for sharing a post against UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, is set to be freed now. As ordered by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the journalist is asked to be released immediately.

Notably, it was the journalist wife who had moved the Supreme Court seeking her husband's relief from jail and as well-deserved, the apex court ordered in favour of her. Kanojia’s fault, as per the police was just to share a post which was being made by another woman putting allegations on the Uttar Pradesh CM. Kanojia was arrested from his Delhi home on Saturday morning and sent to jail in the evening. However, the woman who put the post on social media was also arrested by the police.

Hearing the case of the journalist, the Supreme Court said, “The police can proceed against him, but arrest? No.”

Defending the journalists’ arrest for the social media post, Uttar Pradesh police states that such inflammatory tweets were also made in the past by the journalist.

Additional Solicitor General Vikramjeet Banerjee stated, “He has been making inflammatory tweets in the past not only with respect to caste matters but also gods and goddesses and that’s why he was arrested.”

In response to this, the bench of Supreme court justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi asks, “where is the mischief made out. We need not comment on the nature of the posts for which the action has been taken, the question is whether Kanojia ought to have been deprived of his liberty. The answer to that question prima facie is negative.”

As per the Supreme Court bench of justices, the arrest of the journalist simply on the basis of some posts is against the liberty of a person and on such grounds, the apex court’s judgement is justifiable.

At a time, when people are losing their right to speak and the freedom of expression, this judgement by the apex court is appreciable and boosts the morality of the common people.

Before this, Kanojia’s arrest by the police had sparked quite a row in the capital with the Editors Guild of India strongly criticising the act of arrest as “authoritarian misuse of laws”.

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