Ministry of Home Affairs’, National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has started collecting information about attacks on media-persons, RTI activists and whistleblowers.
These three new categories have been added in the form that is circulated across police stations in the country.
There was no centralised data on attacks on RTI activists, whistleblowers and journalists as investigation of cases were handled by the state police and there was also no clarity on definition of these three categories.
The NCRB will be collecting the data under the heading of grievous hurt of varying degrees which are being registered under relevant sections of IPC.
Venkatesh Nayak, Member, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative stressed on the need of classifying data related to attacks on these three categories as they are classified as murder under Section 302.
The data is published every year by NCRB in the form of its reports.
That the government has woken up to the cruel reality of attacks on citizens who speak the truth and demand their right to know the truth about public affairs is very welcome.
— Venkatesh Nayak, Member, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative
The issue has come to the limelight after the death of people, including a journalist, in the Vyapam scam and sand mafia incident in MP.
Safety of internal whistleblowers has also become a problem over the past months.
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