TURA: Meghalaya Pradesh Youth Congress joined the growing number of Congress FIRs lodged against Republic TV chief and senior journalist Arnab Goswami.
Congress MLA and senior leader, Ampareen Lyngdoh said that freedom of press must be upheld, inciting religious sentiments and character assassinations is an unfortunate offshoot of the misuse of the protected press privilege in the country.
“Arnab must uphold ethics in his shows where he has often crossed the line,” Lyngdoh said.
The party has accused Goswami of launching a defamatory attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi and accused him of making an attempt to communalise the incident of mob lynching in Palghar, Maharashtra.
However, the multiple FIRs filed by the Congress against the Mumbai based journalist have been stayed by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, on Friday the Supreme Court granted journalist Arnab Goswami protection from coercive action for three weeks in various cases filed against him over remarks made during a television discussion on the lynching incident.
The bench of justices DY Chandrachud and MR Shah also issued notices to the Centre, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and union territory of Jammu and Kashmir where cases have been registered against the senior journalist. The court also stayed all FIRs against him except the one registered at Sadar Police Station in Nagpur. It transferred the FIR in Nagpur to Mumbai where it will be investigated.
The FIR filed by the MPYC in Tura police station accused the Republic TV chief of giving a hate speech and a direct attack on the constitution of India.
“Arnab Goswami of Republic TV on his show primetime made willful defamatory attack against Congress President Sonia Gandhi and made a direct attempt to communalise the incident by attaching a hindu- muslim angle to it. He tried to light the communal fire despite public statements given by both the chief minister and the home minister of Maharashtra clarifying that the incident in Palghar had no communal angle to it. He also tried to bring the Christians and Italy into the mix,” stated the MPYC in the FIR.
