Agartala, (Samajweekly) Various media organisations and cross section of journalists on Saturday threatened to launch a massive movements from next week against the continued attacks on media in Tripura.
Some miscreants on Saturday snatched 51 packets comprising over 6,000 newspapers of the leading vernacular daily “Pratibadi Kalam” at Udaipur in southern Tripura forcing the media groups and journalists of different ages met the senior police officials and demanded immediate arrest of the culprits.
Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, who also holds the Home, Information and Cultural Affairs Department, and Law and Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath spoke to the owner and Editor of “Pratibadi Kalam” Anal Roy Chowdhury about the incident.
“Both the Chief Minister and the Law Minister assured me to take appropriate actions against the culprits,” Roy Chowdhury told IANS.
A delegation of Forum for Development and Protection of Media Community (FDPMC) led by its convener Sebak Bhattacharjee and Agartala Press Club Secretary Paranab Sarkar met Deputy Inspector General (Southern Range) Soumitra Dhar and Gomati district police chief Lucky Chauhan and urged them to nab the guilty immediately.
Chauhan told IANS on Saturday night that in the FIR of the incident the name of the wrongdoers were not mentioned.
“However, we have launch a massive search to arrest the people responsible for the crime,” she said.
The Tripura Assembly of Journalists (TAJ), which spearheaded the agitations since September 13 against several attacks on journalists and Chief Minister’s alleged threat to the media, announced to launch a state-wide agitation from next week against the attacks on the media by the miscreants.
TAJ Convener Sekhar Datta in a statement said that the organised assault on the “Pratibadi Kalam” has been continuing over the past few days since the newspaper started exposing “a massive Rs 150 crore scandal in the agriculture department of the state government”.
Meanwhile, Tripura Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Department Director Deba Prasad Sarkar while briefing the media on Saturday said that the news appeared about the reported scam of Rs 150 crore was totally false and misleading.
