A day after a couple of journalists of Simplicity, an online news portal, were detained for ten hours in Coimbatore, the website’s founder Andrew Sam Raja Pandian was arrested for reporting on the shortage of food of intern doctors in Coimbatore Medical College and Hospital and alleged corruption in Public Distribution System.
The arrest was made based on the complaint by M Sundararajan, Assistant Commissioner (Personal), City Corporation under Sections 188, 505 and 3 of the Epidemic Diseases Act. It was reasoned as the reports in ‘Simplicity’ could “turn doctors and PDS workers against the government and derail the efforts to fight the pandemic”.
Read: https://penbugs.com/covid19-in-chennai-complete-lockdown-from-26th-to-29th/
It seems to be a case of curtailing media freedom by imposing this act on a journalist for reporting a story against the administration. The stories that were published had quotes front he affected publics and mentions about the actions taken by the administrative authorities to address the issue.
It is being reported on multiple news portals and journalists that the arrest could be due to the story that quoted DMK leader MK Stalin who was critical of the state minister SP Velumani.
