A Reserve Police Line inspector and a constable have been suspended for allegedly beating up a journalist in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district, police said Tuesday.
The two were suspended on Monday, they said.
The News24 journalist Amit Sharma was covering the derailment of a goods train near Shamli when he was allegedly dragged to the GRP police station and stripped and harassed, Times Now reported.
“They were in plain clothes. One hit my camera and it fell down. When I picked it up they hit and abused me,” he said, ANI reported. The police officers also “urinated in his mouth”, he said.
Journalist Piyush Rai shared a videos of Sharma in jail in which he is seen saying the attack was a retaliation for a negative story.
The incident comes a day after the Supreme Court ordered the immediate release of journalist Prashant Kanojia, arrested for allegedly sharing objectionable posts on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
Kanojia had allegedly shared a video on Twitter and Facebook wherein a woman is seen speaking to reporters of various media organisations outside the chief minister’s office in Lucknow, claiming she had sent a marriage proposal to Adityanath.
An FIR was registered against Kanojia at the Hazratganj police station in Lucknow on the night of June 7, alleging that the accused made “objectionable comments against the chief minister and tried to malign his image”. The journalist was arrested the next day from his East Delhi home and a Lucknow court remanded him to judicial custody till June 22.
The apex court said it was granting bail to Kanojia as it disapproved the deprivation of right to liberty by the state.
(With PTI inputs)