Roti-salt meal: UP scribe booked for 'conspiracy'

LUCKNOW/VARANASI: UP Police have registered a case of criminal conspiracy against Mirzapur-based journalist Pawan Jaiswal, eight days after a video filmed by him showing students at a state-run school having roti with salt as their midday meal went viral on social media platforms.
The FIR was lodged on Saturday on the complaint of block education officer Prem Shankar Ram against the reporter of a vernacular newspaper for "defaming the state government" with his video. A representative of gram pradhan Rajkumar Pal, who had invited the journalist to the school at Siyur in Mirzapur, and an unknown person were also named in the FIR.
The charges slapped include criminal conspiracy, obstructing a public servant in discharge of public functions, false evidence and cheating.
Prem Shankar told TOI that the FIR followed an "investigation" by a three-member team led by Mirzapur chief development officer Priyanka Niranjan. The probe, he said, revealed that a proper meal had not yet been cooked. So, the video was purportedly shot to malign the Yogi Adityanath government. The FIR also states that the video was forwarded to a television news agency and circulated on social media.
The journalist maintained he was discharging his professional duty by highlighting "nutritional inadequacies" in the midday meal.
“I was told about the shortcomings and inadequacies in the midday meals served at a government school in Jamalpur block in Mirzapur. The issue pertained to meals for kids, which were limited to just salt and rice or salt and chapatis. On August 22, I alerted basic education officer Brajesh Kumar Singh about the shortcomings before reporting.”
The police charges invoked strong reactions from the opposition parties. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav took to Twitter to hit out at the government for its “political encounter of a journalist who exposed corruption”.
The Editors Guild of India described it as a “cruel and classic case of shooting the messenger”. The guild said: “It’s shocking that instead of taking action to fix what’s wrong on the ground, the government has filed criminal cases against the journalist.”