Mandeep Punia, a freelance journalist who regularly contributes to The Caravan, was released from Tihar Jail in Delhi on the night of 3 February. The Delhi Police had picked up Punia on 30 January from the farmers’ protest at Singhu, between Haryana and Delhi.
Earlier that day, he had posted a video on Facebook about a group that attacked the Singhu protest on 29 January. Punia reported seeing fifty–sixty people arrive at the site. He said in the video that the group pelted stones at the protesters, lobbed a petrol bomb and tried to set fire to their belongings, in front of thousands of policemen. Punia reported in the video that two of the assailants were associated with the BJP. Later that evening, he was arrested. The police filed a first-information report alleging that Punia had tried to pull a constable, Rajkumar. It characterised him as a protester, and not a journalist.
Shahid Tantray, an assistant photo editor at The Caravan, interviewed Punia hours after his release. Punia said that the police beat him and told him, “You will tell who pelted stones on farmers, is it? Keep reporting.” The following is an edited transcript of the interview.
Shahid Tantray: Can you narrate what all has happened in the past few days?
Mandeep Punia: They must have dragged me around 7 pm—I don’t remember the exact time. I was going to cover the press conference by the Kisan Mazdoor Sangharsh Committee [a prominent union at the protests]. I was close to the barricades [at Singhu].
Two or three policemen came, pulled me towards the barricades and said, “This is Mandeep Punia.” The other policemen began beating me with lathis. About 100 policemen gathered there and then shut me in a tent. Even in the tent, they beat me relentlessly. While beating me, they said, “You want to report, is it? Keep reporting, keep reporting … Become farmers’ well-wisher … You will tell who pelted stones on farmers, is it? Keep reporting.” They hurled filthy abuses at me, jo batane laayak nahi hai [which aren’t worth saying]. They rained batons at my legs. If you look at them, there are a lot of marks as well.
I was made to sit in a vehicle, and they took me across the Yamuna once and across Wazirabad. They found out that the video has reached everywhere—people knew that I was dragged and beaten up. They got my medical examination done at Ambedkar Hospital at 1.40 am.
After three police stations, I was taken to Samaypur Badli. They told me that I have been booked in different charges—misbehaving with the police, fighting with them, things like that. I wasn’t given the exact sections [of the Indian Penal Code].
ST: The police’s narrative is that you attacked them and tried to go through the barricades they had put up.
MP: More than 100 policemen were there. How can one attack 100 policemen? How can one person do it?
ST: Did you try to speak to any officer at the tent when they were beating you?
MP: Jatinder Singh Meena, [the additional deputy commissioner of police Outer North Delhi], had come there to talk then. I had told him, “We had spoken earlier in the day, sir. I was doing a story on that, I am a journalist.” He said yes. “Yes, you are a journalist. We will leave you, after medical aid.” But after that, he left and the whole thing was repeated.
ST: For how long did all this happen? Did they let you speak to your family?
MP: They didn’t let me speak to my family that night. My family was with my journalist associates in the Alipur station. They thought that’s where I would be. [After news of Mandeep being picked up was released on social media, journalists and family members began a search for him. The first-information report against Punia was registered at the Alipur station.] Then in the morning, about 9 am, they reached the Samaypur Badli station.
When they were beating me in the tent, I kept asking what was my crime. They kept saying again and again, “You want to report? Make a video? Come, we will make you do it.” A policeman was breaking my camera, and he was saying, “Issi mein hai na iska?” [This has it, right?] It had footage of those who were pelting stones at the farmers. They broke it. I have no idea where it is. I had a Samsung phone, they broke that. There was another phone that they broke.
They made me sit at a station in Wazirabad. Whoever would come near me, would taunt me, “Aur ban le reporter, aur kar le report”—Go be a reporter, go report. Some slapped me. They troubled me at the police station.
ST: Can you elaborate on how they troubled you?
MP: For instance, I was requesting them that “if you are arresting me, let me speak to my family for legal aid. Let me speak to them once at least.” They did not let me speak to anyone. They were saying strange things, again and again, that “What case should we book him under?” “Let’s book him under this case,” “Let’s book him under that case.” They would start laughing after saying this. They were trying to scare me completely.They were continuously saying such things—that they would implicate me in a rape case or in some other case. I was getting scared also about being booked in false cases.
I would tell them “I want to speak to my family members” or “I want to speak to my editors” or “let me speak to my editors then you do whatever you want to.” But they would keep laughing, saying, “You are gone, you will be gone for a while. You will rot in jail, then you speak to your editors and family members as much as you want.”
ST: Did the police let you get the medico-legal certificate smoothly? Did they try to dictate it?
MP: The doctors had seen the news by then. Police kept saying, “See, this was a case of an altercation with our staff, don’t do so much, doctor sahab. See, show just two or four injuries.” But the doctor showed a lot of strength, he said, “You please stand outside till I do his medical examination.” The doctor told them very clearly, “See, my job is to do a medical examination properly. Whatever injuries he has, I will do my job.”
ST: How did the Tihar authorities behave with you?
MP: The Tihar staff was nice. They had seen the videos by then, they knew I was Mandeep Punia. They were saying, “This is a boy, they have unnecessarily arrested him.”
Farmers were also there at the barrack where I was moved. I thought, “I was arrested from a farmers’ protest, and again I am in the middle of farmers now. I should use this as an opportunity to report from the jail as well.” So I started speaking to them, in detail. I asked for a pen and made notes on my body—their names, age, where they were from and what they said. I have written things on my arm, my leg, too.
If you see, I have written “Jasminder.” He is a 43-year-old farmer from Mansa. He [said he] does farming on a 5-acre land. [He said] when he went to Narela market with his friends, then the police picked him up while beating him—not from Singhu border, they were doing some work in Narela. Jasminder would show me his injuries and cry. He had a very big blue mark on his thigh.
Along with him, many other farmers had also been picked up. Among them was Baba Ajit Singh, from Haryana’s Baniyani village. He is a granthi in a gurudwara from Manohar Lal Khattar’s village [Khattar is the chief minister of Haryana]. He’s elderly, with a white beard. He was picked from Burari ground, the ground that the government had allotted for protest. [He said] the police beat him also while picking him up. Similarly, I have written this name, Narender Gupta, he is from the village Kakrola [in west Delhi]. He had nothing to do with the farmers’ protest. He has got bail and was released today, after [being in jail] for three–four days. He was also picked up and beaten by the police. He, too, showed me his bruises.
There were also a lot of youth from Punjab. The Bharatiya Kisan Union Ekta Ugrahan, two of their people were there—Jagsir and Jassi. There was Malkit Singh, from Tohana [in Fatehabad district of Haryana]. He is a 47-year-old farmer. He was also picked up from Narela. He, too, would show me his injuries and start crying. Again and again, he would ask, “When will we be released?” And, “This government is oppressing us. They can keep us in jail for as many days as they want but we will not go back to our villages. We will go back only when these farm laws have been repealed. We have been wrongly arrested. And they have charged us under so many sections that it is going to be difficult to get released [on bail]. And these charges are all false.”
All the farmers talked to me quite openly. Some of them had not even received their dastars [turbans sacred to the Sikh community] and were making do with dirty dastars.
ST: Can you elaborate on their conversations?
MP: If you talk to the farmers who have been put in jail, they are all innocent—they were clueless when they were picked up or when they were lathi-charged. For instance, three kilometres from Singhu, there is this place Narela. Some twenty to thirty farmers had gone to Narela when they were picked up from there and badly beaten up with lathis. Similarly, Gupta sahib, he was not even associated with the farmers’ protest—he’s a civilian but they still beat him up and detained him.
But the others locked up are farmers. Most of them are small farmers; some have five acres of land, some have ten. And they are all from villages. They are not able to understand why the government is treating them like this, which is why [in jail] they would repeatedly ask me, “What will happen to us? Why is the government doing this? We haven’t even done anything, we were just protesting peacefully.” They have a thousand questions, but there is no one to answer them in jail. There is no one to listen to them. Their voices are being buried in the dark walls of that prison. They are somehow managing to pass the days.
But their will is strong. Even now, they told me that “when you get out tell the people that we are undeterred. And tell our leaders that till the laws are taken back, they can keep up here for as long as possible, and nothing will happen to us.”
ST: What differences did you see in the freedom to report inside the jail and outside?
MP: When you are in jail, you are shut inside. You have to find different ways of communicating. The person who is shut in the chakki beside yours, you have to speak loudly if you want to talk to them because you can’t get out. You have no social media. But I tried reporting inside, and I have been successful. I have also jotted the numbers of the families of the farmers I met there so that I can inform them that the [farmers] are safe and sound. I can also take the family’s version of events.
ST: What was the idea behind reporting in Tihar Jail?
MP: The reporter’s job is to report. As I was detained, my reporting was interrupted. I was sent to Tihar Jail—there were also people who have been oppressed by the government. Today, at this time, it is essential to tell the truth when the government wants the truth not to be exposed.
[I thought] if I get released, then their story can reach the public. So that the public knows who are these people who have been put in jail. This is why I felt that reporting is what I do, so if they have put me in Tihar Jail then I will report from Tihar Jail. I was focussed, in my mind, as long as I was in Tihar: “I am reporting from Tihar. Tihar is my beat. It doesn’t matter if they have put me in jail.”
Journalists like me, the reporters, the ones who go to ground-zero to report, they face a lot of difficulties. So many journalists have been arrested. There is this journalist Kappan Siddique, he was arrested. The government should release him, and all those who have been put in jail just because they were reporting.
ST: What do you think about press freedom in the country, especially given your own experiences?
MP: There is no press freedom left. First of all, the few independent media organisations that are trying, and the people who try to do journalism with the real values of journalism, their Twitter accounts are being suspended, they are being charged under false FIRS, they are being arrested. Those who toe the government line, they are celebrated, they even get awards, the government launches new channels for them to run. But the government oppresses those who report about the people who are being troubled by the government. The government puts them in jail, harasses them and tries to bury their voices.
This is truly shameful. Anyway our country’s rank on the [World] Press Freedom Index is quite low. It is out in the open. See what happened to the journalist who reported about the children being given salt with rotis for their mid-day meal in Uttar Pradesh. We saw that 55 journalists were booked by the police for reporting on the coronavirus pandemic [and lockdown]. Then there is Siddique’s case and my case. We were just reporting what mainstream media does not show.
ST: A few months ago when the Republic’s Arnab Goswami was arrested, the home minister and other central government ministers started talking about press freedom. They took to Twitter to decry Arnab’s imprisonment. Why do you think there was no such hue and cry in your case?
MP: The ruling party spoke up in his support because he toes the government’s line. In a way, he is a durbari [courtier] journalist. When a durbari journalist is put in jail, obviously the durbar will be agitated. His leaked WhatsApp chat has anyway exposed him as a government partisan. So, obviously, they will shout, “press freedom, press freedom.”
But they will not shout “press freedom” when journalists from The Caravan are attacked. [On 11 August 2020, three journalists from The Caravan were attacked by a Hindu right-wing mob in northeast Delhi while they were reporting on the communal violence in the city in February 2020.] They don’t talk of press freedom when all these colleagues are attacked. They didn’t talk of press freedom when Siddique was arrested; they keep silent when Twitter accounts are suspended.
ST: I noticed that you wrote down your notes on the same leg where you are injured.
MP: The government gives us wounds, and the only way I could heal them was through my report. I like reporting. So, when I ran my pen across my wounds, it gave me peace that I am being able to do my work again. The government may have tried to stop these legs, to break them, but they served me again. I took all my journalistic notes for my report on my legs.
For journalists, the thing that they are attacking is our pens. Forget the legs—they are stopping your pen from writing. We have to sharpen that very pen to write the truth so that your truth makes them uneasy. They are troubling you, you show the truth and the truth will trouble them.
ST: Do you think that the pen has now proven costly to you?
MP: I think there has never been a golden period for journalism in our country. There have been challenges in every era. Journalists are actually quite creative people—they find ways and means to do their journalistic work every time, in every situation, no matter the difficulties. They find ways to bring out the truth. We will also have to find ways. There are challenges but we will fight these challenges, we will not run and hide from these obstacles. We will not be afraid.
This interview has been edited and condensed.