File Photo of New Mumbai Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria with officials of Mumbai police during a press conference in Mumbai on Feb.16, 2014. (Photo: Sandeep Mahankal/IANS)
By Rohan Venkataramakrishnan
MUMBAI, March 21 – TwoCircles.net, a news website about Indian Muslim issues, has caused Mumbai police chief Rakesh Maria “annoyance, inconvenience, insult and hatred”. That’s why the city’s Cyber Crime Investigation Cell wrote to the site on Wednesday requesting the editor to delete two articles immediately and send it the author’s details. These articles, the Cell said, feature “false and grossly offensive comments” about Maria.
The article in question is titled, “Rakesh Maria should be arrested for conducting activities which are terror-related: Advocate Pracha”. It features an interview with the lawyer representing German Bakery blast convict Mirza Himayat Baig, who was convicted and sentenced to death last year for the attack in Pune in 2012 that killed 17 people and injured 64. A follow-up piece includes a much longer discussion about the nature of terror cases.
The lawyer, Mehmood Pracha, alleges that Maria, who was then the chief of Maharashtra’s Anti Terrorism Squad, was responsible for falsely implicating Baig in the German Bakery blast case and, in the process, “actively saving the real terrorists”. Pracha goes on to demand that Maria should be arrested, and claims that he intends to petition in court requesting that an FIR be lodged against Mumbai’s top cop.
However, eyebrows have been raised by the police decision to use Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, a Section which even the Supreme Court has acknowledged is liable to abuse, rather than resorting to either an official rebuttal or a defamation notice.
“It is submitted that a false and grossly offensive comments are found to posted in the above mentioned links, which are causing annoyance, inconvenience, insult and hatred to the Commissioner of Police, Mumbai,” said the letter, addressed to the editor of TwoCircles. “It is therefore requested to delete/block above mentioned links with an immediate effect and provide the following details at the earliest.”
It goes on to demand details of the IP address of the person who created the article, the login-logout details of this user as well as an email ID by which he can be contacted.
“This is a strong-arm tactic that is being used,” said human rights lawyer Vrinda Grover. “In fact, the allegation that is being made by the lawyer is that the police has abused its position in power. I’m afraid the legal notice actually reaffirms the abuse by trying to browbeat with 66A.”
Pracha, the subject of the piece the Police is trying to block, echoed this opinion, saying the cops should have come after him instead of sending a notice to TwoCircles. “It is me who has made these statements in the press. Instead of sending me a defamation notice, he is using the constitutional powers in the wrong way, which is exactly what I’m fighting,” the lawyer said. “The correct way would be to confront me, not the journalist. You don’t shoot the messenger, do you?”
Meanwhile, TwoCircles is still in discussions with its lawyers about how to respond to the notice from Mumbai Police, although the article remains online for the moment. M. Reyaz, the reporter who interviewed Pracha, said he believed it is clear the police is trying to intimidate them. “They are not using a defamation case, which in a way points to the fact that this information is not defamatory,” Reyaz said. “Even the allegations aren’t new, and Maria has been in controversy before. But of course he doesn’t want to draw any attention. We feel that, because we are a small organisation, they are trying to threaten us.”
TwoCircles’ editor, Kashif-ul Huda insisted that this isn’t just an issue of personal annoyance, but one of freedom of the press. “We see it as an attempt by Mumbai Police to scare us in taking down the story,” he said. “It would have been better if they had responded to the serious allegation by a senior advocate. This is a press freedom issue where police is trying to censor views of a senior advocate from coming out in public.” Maria did not respond to Scroll.in’s questions about the matter. –Courtesy scroll.in