By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Nov 10 2003 (IPS)

While the Supreme Court on Monday stayed the arrest of six journalists as ordered by the Tamil Nadu state government, concern continues that the episode is but one more sign of the repression by its chief minister.

No less than India’s Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, who also holds the home portfolio, praised the apex court’s intervention and said that ”it is good for democracy”.

The Chennai-based journalists, made up of five senior staffers of the respected ‘The Hindu’ newspaper and the editor of a Tamil-language newspaper ‘Murasoli’, went into hiding soon after the Tamil Nadu Speaker K Kalimuthu ordered their arrests Friday. They are yet to surface.

”We would not like to take risks and would not like them to be trapped as we know what would happen if they were caught,” N Ram, the editor-in-chief of ‘The Hindu, which celebrated the 125th anniversary of its founding last week, said at a press conference in Chennai soon after the court’s intervention became known.

Kalimuthu said an editorial that had appeared in ‘The Hindu’ in April had ”cast a slur on the chief minister’s (Jayaraman Jayalalithaa) action in the assembly” and that it constituted breach of privilege.

As punishment, Kalimuthu ordered publisher S Rangarajan, editor N Ravi, executive editor Malini Parthasarathy, chief of bureau V Jayant and special correspondent Radha Venkatesan to 15 days’ days imprisonment.

The editor of the Murasoli, S Selvam, received a similar sentence for translating and reproducing the editorial in his publication, one of the more popular vernacular dailies published from Chennai.

Kalimuthu’s order rallied together journalists and politicians of all shades over the weekend. They said the arrest order was not only an attempt to muzzle the media but violated the constitutional provisions regarding the freedom of speech and expression.

Editorials appearing in several leading newspapers on Monday were, if anything, even more critical of Jayalalithaa and her rule in Tamil Nadu, which has seen the arrest of her political rivals and in some cases their incarceration for more than a year under anti-terrorist laws.

Jayalalithaa, a former film actress who herself faces charges of high corruption during an earlier term as chief minister, has, since the return to power of her political party in May 2001, unleashed police raids and arrests on her political rivals and those daring to her criticise her policies.

”Driven by a vindictive attitude, she (Jayalalithaa) seems to have lost sight of the customary freedoms which the press enjoys in a free society,” commented the ‘Hindustan Times’ newspaper in an editorial titled ”Chennai’s tinpot dictator”.

The editorial also referred to the continued incarceration under anti-terrorist laws for more than a year now of a political rival, Vaiko (one name), who belongs to a party that is a member of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Vajpayee has been helpless in either stopping the arrest of Vaiko for making a public speech supporting Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or obtaining his release, since law and order is a provincial subject.

Vaiko’s arrest under the non-bailable Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) is often cited as a classic example of the misuse of the law that was passed by Vajpayee’s government in March 2002.

Even more bizarre was the midnight arrest and roughing up in August 2001 of former Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi and two union ministers, Murasoli Maran and T R. Baalu – all of whom belong to a party that is a rival to Jayalithaa’s.

Within two hours of the Tamil Nadu speaker’s order late Friday, a posse of policemen raided the offices of ‘The Hindu’ in an attempt to arrest Malini Parthasarathy. When they failed, they raided her house later that night.

Another woman journalist from ‘The Hindu’ who has been ordered arrested by the speaker, Radha Venkatesan, is away from the country on a British Chevening scholarship.

There have been complaints that the Tamil Nadu police under Jayalalithaa routinely plant evidence, including weapons and drugs, on people they arrest so that they are denied bail and incarcerated for long periods.

For example, the editor of ‘Nakkheeran’, R R Gopal was arrested 18 months ago. Charges against him include illegal possession of various weapons described by the prosecution as a revolver, gun, pistol and musket. This led to the state high court’s ruling that ”the weapons could not have been in the possession of Mr Gopal or recovered from him.”

According to N Ram, one of India’s most respected journalists, there is a need to codify define what exactly constitutes privilege. ”We have been demanding that the legislatures codify privilege since assemblies claim sky-high powers under this guise, ” he has been quoted as saying.

Ram himself does not face arrest because the articles that are supposed to have offended Jayalalithaa and the Tamil Nadu assembly were written at a time when he was not on the staff of ‘The Hindu’.

Apart form journalists and politicians, well-known non-government organisations (NGOs) have found themselves arrested by the Tamil Nadu police on what they say are trumped up charges.

Opposition party leaders from Tamil Nadu met Vajpayee in the capital on Monday to petition him to intervene and ”restore democracy” in the state.

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