NEW DELHI: The
Editors Guild of India today termed the FIR filed against The
Tribune's journalist who had exposed breach in
Aadhaar data "unfair, unjustified and a direct attack on the freedom of the press".
"The Guild condemns UIDAI's action to have The Tribune reporter booked by the police as it is clearly meant to browbeat a journalist whose investigation on the matter was of great public interest. It is unfair, unjustified and a direct attack on the freedom of the press. Instead of penalising the reporter,
UIDAI should have ordered a thorough internal investigation into the alleged breach and made its findings public. The Guild demands that the concerned Union Ministry intervene and have the cases against the reporter withdrawn apart from conducting an impartial investigation into the matter," the Editors Guild said in a press release.
On January 3, a news report published in the Tribune had claimed that how, for a small sum of money made to a payment bank, an agent of a private group would allegedly create a gateway to access details contained in an individual's Aadhaar card. Using a false identity, Khaira had posed as an interested party and claimed in her report that she had easy access to details that individuals had listed in their Aadhaar cards.
Following the expose, the UIDAI in a statement had subsequently denied that any data breach was possible and registered an FIR against her and the news daily on Sunday.
"UIDAI assures that there has not been any Aadhaar data breach... The Aadhaar data including biometric information is fully safe and secure," it said.
Today, the deputy director of
Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) registered an FIR against the news daily journalist
Rachna Khaira in the crime branch of the Delhi Police. The reporter was also booked under IPC sections 419 (punishment for cheating under impersonation), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery), 471 (using a forged document) and also under sections of the IT Act and the Aadhaar Act.
