A digital news portal based in Guwahati has lodged a complaint against the Meghalaya police with press council of India (PCI). Journalists of ‘Northeast Now’, the news portal, have registered formal complaints with multiple authorities which it terms as a Meghalaya police’s despicable aim to gag the media.
Complaints were also registered with the union minister of information and broadcasting Prakash Javadekar, Indian Journalists Union, Editors’ Guild of India, Digital News Publishers Association of India and Journalist Union of Assam.
The complaint said that successive insistent communications from Meghalaya police have raised a serious question about the state police force’s intentions to gag the media.
MGT Sangma, special superintendent of police (CID) of the Meghalaya Police on August 13, had sent a notice under Section 91 CrPC to the news portal .
The police officer asked the news portal to immediately remove a news report and also to “provide the authenticity of the source of information” to the Meghalaya police.
On August 10, the portal had reported that the former Meghalaya chief minister Mukul Sangma may join the BJP citing unnamed sources.
Reacting to the news, Sangma, took to social media to deny the veracity of the news. He said he was “asking the cyber crime cell of Meghalaya police to investigate and track the source of this misinformation with criminal, mala fide and defamatory intent”.
