Updated: November 8, 2020 4:45:21 pm
Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami after the Alibaug court hearing at midnight Wednesday (Express photo by Narendra Vaskar)
Republic TV Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami, arrested in complicity in a suicide case, was transferred to Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai on Sunday morning. from a makeshift quarantine center in Alibaug. A Raigad police officer said Goswami was found using a cell phone.
A Republic TV video showed Goswami, while being taken to jail, claiming that he was assaulted in the quarantine center and that there was a threat to his life.
“I am not allowed to speak to my lawyers, my life is threatened. They pushed and assaulted me this morning. At 6 o’clock they woke me up and said they wouldn’t let me talk to the lawyers. Please tell the people of the country that my life is threatened. My life is in danger, please tell the courts to help me. Tell the court that they beat me in jail, ”says the video that Goswami says.
The Mumbai High Court shall pronounce its order on Goswami’s request for provisional bail Monday. The case against Goswami concerns the death of interior designer Anvay Naik and his mother Kumud Naik in their bungalow in Alibaug in May 2018. According to police officials, the duo committed suicide over an alleged non-payment of fees by the Goswami TV channel and two other companies.
Samyabrata Ray, Goswami’s wife and the channel’s senior executive editor, said in a statement that the jailer assaulted her husband after he asked for access to his lawyers and faced a death threat.
“This morning my husband, who has spent four nights in judicial custody, was dragged and dragged by the Maharashtra police in a darkened police van to Taloja prison. He repeatedly said ‘my life is threatened’, but to no avail. He repeatedly said that the jailer assaulted him after he requested access to his lawyers, which was surprisingly denied, ”he said.
“He detailed the assault that was inflicted on him during this custody and pleaded, with folded hands, to the Supreme Court of India to intervene and release him on bail. An innocent man and journalist with decades of reputation, a journalist doing his duty for the nation, has been assaulted, harassed and charged with trumped-up charges. He has been imprisoned without a pardon, ”he also said.
Read | Arnab Goswami Case: Filing House Proceedings in South Carolina Without the President’s Permission Equals Violation, Official Says
Ray said institutions in Maharashtra aimed at safeguarding law and order had become “rapists and robbers in uniform” and fundamental rights were being “trampled on.”
“The state machine has become a servant to politically motivated aggression and the pillars of democracy cannot be bystanders to the grave and blatant human rights abuses and state excesses against a citizen in the state of Maharashtra,” he said.
“With Arnab publicly revealing the threat to his life and the atrocities he faces in custody, law and order officials and the entire state and national machinery will be held accountable if any harm is inflicted on my husband. I humbly appeal to the institutions that still hold the truth in power and stand as a pillar of our great democracy to take note of the flagrant abuse and abuse of power at stake to punish a journalist who demanded responsibility. Today a precedent is being set for our democracy. I go to large institutions with the hope that those in power will not remain blind or dumb to the atrocity of a man, a citizen, a journalist, a news network and the free press in general, more ”, said Ray in your statement. .
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd
.
