Press Council of India takes suo-motu cognizance on threats to Arunachal scribe

OUR CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR: The Press Council of India (PCI) has expressed concern over threats of physical violence in several online posts to a lady journalist in Arunachal Pradesh.

The PCI in a communique on Tuesday expressed concern over the threats of physical violence to Tongam Rina, Associate Editor of Arunachal Times for an article written by her on April 19 this year under caption "Wildlife hunting on spike, says a forest official".

Taking suo-motu cognizance of the matter, the PCI has directed the state chief secretary and DGP tp prepare a report on facts of the case and submitted to the council immediately.

A news article was published in the April 19 edition of the newspaper where Tongam reported about the alleged rising instances of wildlife hunting in the state during the lockdown.

The report was on a video clip on circulation in social media where three people killed a king cobra and one of the person in the clip said that they killed the snake to eat as there was no meat to eat during the lockdown.

Nowhere in the report had any allegation been made by the journalist, or any accusation of wrongdoing levelled, apart from mentioning what the men in the videos themselves claimed to have done.

Apart from the visually graphic memes that the burgeoning troll army of Arunachal had produced, Tongam had been threatened with physical violence on several posts online, some justifying the 2012 attempt on her life, when she had been shot for her reporting work, and instigating that she should be shot again for this latest report.

The Arunachal Press Club, the Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists and the Arunachal Electronic & Digital Media Association had also expressed concern over the plethora of online attacks that a senior member of the press has been subjected to for her unbiased reporting.

The Indian Journalist Union had also expressed profound concern over the trolling of Tongam, and joined its colleagues in Arunachal in demanding legal action against the online abusers at the earliest.