Journalists & writers condemn the FIR against The Wire's Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan, Stop the attempt to intimidate independent media!

New Delhi, 05^th April. Eminent journalists and writers of the country have strongly condemned the FIR against Siddharth Varadarajan, the editor of The Wire.

The signatories of the statement include journalists P Sainath, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Seema Mustafa, Vinod K Jose, Naresh Fernandes and Bhasha Singh; scholars such as Anand Teltumbde, Akeel Bilgrami, G N Devy and Zoya Hasan; writers such as Amit Chaudhuri and Badri Raina; members of the cultural community such as T M Krishna, Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah, Mallika Sarabhai, Pushpamala N and Anuradha Kapur.

They and many others have come together to condemn the FIR against The Wire’s Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan.

We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the FIRs filed against The Wire’s Founding Editor Siddharth Varadarajan by the police in Faizabad District, Uttar Pradesh. This is clearly an attempt to intimidate the media and muzzle its freedom.

The Wire has been accused of causing panic when it reported that the UP CM Adityanath, attended a public religious event on 25 March at Ayodhya, despite the countrywide lockdown. The Wire has responded that the Chief Minister’s attendance of this event is a matter of public record and knowledge. Hence, the IPC provisions on “disobedience of an order issued by a public servant” and issuing “statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill-will between classes” mentioned in the FIRs do not apply.

A sentence in an article published by The Wire on 31 March mistakenly attributed the claim that Lord Ram would protect his devotees from the Corona virus to CM Adityanath, a remark actually made by Acharya Paramhans, head of the official trust which is to build the Ram temple in Ayodhya. This was retracted the following day by the website and the necessary correction made.

Mritunjay Kumar, Media Adviser to the Chief Minister, had earlier taunted Vardarajan in a tweet, saying, “Along with running the website, [you] will have to seek donations to fight the case.”

This is gross intolerance of criticism, essential for independent media to function in a democracy. This is why we strongly condemn the FIR filed against our colleague Siddharth Varadarajan as politically motivated, and call on all citizens of conscience to insist on our right to a free and independent media.

1	A Mangai	72	Naina Dayal
2	Abhijit Sengupta	73	Nancy Adajania
3	Abhishek Majumdar	74	Naresh Fernandes
4	Adil Jussawalla	75	Naseeruddin Shah
5	Aditi Mehta	76	Natasha Badhwar
6	Akeel Bilgrami	77	Navrekha Sharma
7	Alok Perti	78	Neelan Premji
8	Amit Bhaduri	79	Neeraj Malik
9	Amit Chaudhuri	80	Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay
10	Amitabha Pande	81	Nirmal Mitra
11	Amitav Ghosh	82	Nivedita Menon
12	Ammu Joseph	83	Nupur Basu
13	Anand Patwardhan	84	P R Dasgupta
14	Anand Teltumbde	85	P Sainath
15	Anita Agnihotri	86	Padmaja Shaw
16	Anna Dani	87	Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
17	Anuradha Kapur	88	Partha Chatterjee
18	Ardhendu Sen	89	Parthasarathi Majumdar
19	Aruna Roy	90	Parvathi Menon
20	Ashok Sharma	91	Poile Sengupta
21	Atamjit Singh	92	Prabir Purkayastha
22	Ayesha Kidwai	93	Preeti Edakunny
23	B R P Bhaskar	94	Prema Viswanathan
24	Badri Raina	95	Purushottam Agrawal
25	Bharati Jagannathan	96	Pushpamala N
26	Bhasha Singh	97	Rahman Abbas
27	C K Meena	98	Ratna Pathak Shah
28	Chaman Lal	99	Rekha Awasthi
29	Chandrakant Patil	100	Renu Ramanath
30	Debashis Chatterji	101	Revathi Siva Kumar
31	Devaki Khanna	102	Revati Laul
32	Devasahayam MG	103	Ritu Menon
33	Firoz Kamal	104	Rukmini Bhaya Nair
34	G N Devy	105	S Raghunandana
35	Geeta Kapur	106	Sakuntala Narasimhan
36	Geeta Seshu	107	Saleem Peeradina
37	Geetanjali Shree	108	Salim Yusufji
38	Gita Jayaraj	109	Sandhya Srinivasan
39	Githa Hariharan	110	Sangeeta Luthra Sharma
40	Hari Vasudevan	111	Sanjeev Kumar
41	Hindal Tyabji	112	Satyabhama Subramanian
42	Indira Chandrasekhar	113	Saumya Chakrabarti
43	Indra Shekhar Shahh	114	Seema Mustafa
44	Javed Malick	115	Shafey Kidwai
45	Jeet Thayil	116	Shamsul Islam
46	Jisha Elizabeth	117	Shankar Raghuraman
47	Jyothi A	118	Shashi Deshpande
48	Jyoti Punwani	119	Shoma A Chatterji
49	K P Fabian	120	Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
50	K. Satchidanandan	121	Srinivasa Gowda
51	Kamayani Bali Mahabal	122	Subhasis Nibirh
52	Keki Daruwalla	123	Subir Ghosh
53	Kingshuk Nag	124	Sudhanva Deshpande
54	Kumkum Roy	125	Sugata Srinivasaraju
55	Leela Jacinto	126	Sujata Madhok
56	M M P Singh	127	Sujatha Rao
57	Madhu Bhaduri	128	Sukanta Chaudhuri
58	Maja Daruwala	129	Sumi Krishna
59	Makarand Sathe	130	Sumit Sarkar
60	Mala Dayal	131	Sundar Burra
61	Malini Subramaniam	132	Suresh Goel
62	Mallika Sarabhai	133	Swapan Chakravorty
63	Manabi Majumdar	134	T M Krishna
64	Mangad Rathnakaran	135	Tanika Sarkar
65	Manishi Jani	136	Tapati Guha Thakurta
66	Mannika Chopra	137	Vibha Puri Das
67	Meena Gupta	138	Vijay Prashad
68	Meena Menon	139	Vijaya Venkataraman
69	Melanie P Kumar	140	Vinod K Jose
70	Mridula Garg	141	Vivek Narayanan
71	Mrinal Pande	142	Zoya Hasan