CPJ is deeply disturbed by reports that Naresh Kumar Kalita, news editor of the Assamese-language newspaper "Agradoot," is now being detained under the National Security Act (NSA), which allows for preventive detention without trial.
**Updates IFEX alerts of 25 February and 11 February 1999; for background on the Ajit Bhuyan case see IFEX alerts of 3 March 1998 and 23 October 1997**
The Kamrup district magistrate issued the order to book Kalita under the NSA on 4 March 1999, according to the Guwahati-based, English-language newspaper "The Sentinel." NSA provisions allow for the detention of those who have acted "in any manner prejudicial to the security of the State Government."
Police first arrested Kalita at his home in Guwahati in the early morning hours of 10 February. They searched the premises for about three hours before taking him into custody. Authorities stated that they recovered weapons and ammunition from Kalita's home, and accuse the journalist of ties to the militant separatist group United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).
On 25 February, CPJ wrote to Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, after Guwahati's High Court rejected Kalita's bail petition for the second time in two weeks. In that letter, CPJ reported that journalists in Assam believe Kalita's arrest was related to the recent publication of an article in "Agradoot" which reported that police vehicles were being used to transport illegally obtained timber for the construction of the Assamese chief minister's new house. Agradoot has a reputation for publishing articles unflattering to the administration, and this, too, may have encouraged authorities to order the arrest.
Kalita's relatives claim that, at the time of the police raid, officers forced them to sign blank forms that might later be used by authorities to forge confessions that could incriminate Kalita.
Prisoners held under the NSA are not permitted a court hearing, but are granted an audience with an advisory committee that determines the legal propriety of the detention. Although such committees are supposed to operate free from political pressures, CPJ noted that in November 1997, the central government dismissed the members of an advisory committee which ordered the release of Ajit Bhuyan-then editor of the Assamese-language newspaper "Asomiya Protidin." In that case, although the committee had determined that there were insufficient grounds for Bhuyan's detention under the NSA, Bhuyan was swiftly rearrested (see IFEX alerts).
CPJ is dismayed that the Indian government routinely uses the NSA and other statutes to punish journalists for their work. Journalists are particularly vulnerable to such charges in areas like Assam where there are violent secessionist movements, as their ordinary reporting activities require that they maintain links with militant extremist groups.
