Police officers and journalists at loggerheads with each other from time to time is old news, but in Kerala it is making headlines after a sub-inspector unzipped his fly in an obscene gesture to a journalist.
A local police station in Punaloor, Kerala is facing a lot of heat after an expose by a local cable channel, later picked up by media houses like Mathrubhumi that showed the attitude of police officers towards journalist who criticise them.
Mohammed Rafi, a journalist who works for a local cable news network has alleged that he was harassed for reporting an incident in which sub-inspectors Shivaprasad and Vimod attacked a person involved in an accident.
According to Rafi, he took visuals of the officers beating up and partially stripping a man after a road accident. The next day, on July 11, the police officers asker Rafi to handover the footage to them. They allegedly abused and harassed him and it was then that the sub-inspector made the obscene gesture, which was also caught on camera.
Mathrubhumi reported that when Rafi refused to handover the footage, a case was filed against him.
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