A case has been registered by Bandra-Kurla Police in Mumbai against a freelance journalist and four others for allegedly obstructing a demolition drive carried out by the BMC. The incident occurred when the BMC was carrying out a demolition drive where a protestor allegedly manhandled a woman police constable. According to reports, the slum dwellers started protesting where journalist Priyanka Borpujari also joined in, during which a woman protestor even allegedly bit a police constable.
As per reports, police said that the police personnel were on bandobast duty while the civic authority (BMC) was clearing the slums. That was when the journalist protested along with the slum dwellers. Police claims that they initially requested Borpujari to not obstruct work, but she did not comply with the request.
An offence has been registered against Borpujari and her four colleagues at the BKC Police Station and probe in underway. Meanwhile, Borpujari and other journalists took to the microblogging site Twitter to voice their anger against the police action. According to her colleague at The Hindu, she was not commissioned to work on the demolition story, but was contemplating to pitch it to them. It was also claimed that she was detained and ill-treated because she had video of police personnel manhandling the slum dwellers on her mobile phone.
..In this case, she was not working on a story about the demolitions commissioned by me or by anyone else at The Hindu.
She told me she would have pitched it to me if matters had not taken the turn they had, and if she had done so, I would have treated it n merit, as I would ..— Peter Griffin (@zigzackly) December 26, 2017
Borpujari has also written for other left leaning propaganda websites like Scroll and The Wire. Borpujari has been booked under section 353 of the Indian Penal Code on charges of assaulting or using criminal force to deter a public servant from discharging his duty. It is a bailable offence with imprisonment extending up to two years.
