Gilani walks free, Tehelka Badal gets bail

BY express| IN Media Freedom | 14/01/2003

Reprinted from the Indian Express

Express News Service

New Delhi, January 13: The courts today released two journalists who had been detained for at least six months on allegedly trumped charges in separate but politically controversial cases.

While the Supreme Court granted bail to Tehelka reporter Kumar Badal in a poaching case, the chief metropolitan magistrate of Delhi, Sangeeta Dhingra Sehgal, allowed the Government to withdraw an official secrets case against Kashmir Times correspondent Syed Iftikar Gilani.

Lending a touch of drama, Nobel Laureate Sir V.S. Naipaul attended the apex court to show solidarity with Tehelka, where he is a director of the holding company. ‘‘I am here just to look and see. I am concerned about the matter,’’ Naipaul told mediapersons as he walked along with his wife Nadira and Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal.

A bench comprising Justice Santosh Hegde and Justice B.P. Singh directed Badal, accused of violating the Wildlife Protection Act by conducting a sting operation on poaching, to furnish a bail bond of Rs 50,000 and two sureties of the like amount to the trial court.

Brushing aside the CBI’s plea not to grant bail till it completed the investigation in two months, the bench said that if it wanted to complete the probe ‘‘it can do so in 24 hours. Otherwise it can go on for 24 years.’’

The Supreme Court, however, granted bail on the condition that, except on trial dates, Badal would not enter the part of Uttar Pradesh where he is alleged to have filmed the poaching in a forest. Badal has also been directed to appear before the CBI’s investigating officer, M.C. Sahani, on the first Monday of every month.

No such conditions were imposed on Gilani as the Delhi police dropped the charge that the document recovered from his computer in July 2002 about the placement of Indian troops in Jammu and Kashmir violated the Official Secrets Act. In an in-camera hearing attended by Director General of Military Intelligence O.S. Lochab and DCP of Delhi Police Ashok Chand, Sehgal permitted the Government to withdraw the case in ‘‘public interest’’ and discharged Gilani ‘‘without going into the factual details.’’

Gilani walked free following the Government’s belated admission that — as reported by The Indian Express — the document concerned was ‘‘easily available’’ on the Internet and a Pak defence journal, Islamabad Papers, and was therefore of ‘‘negligible security value.’’

Though the Government filed the withdrawal application on Friday, the court passed an order on it only today. Gilani however will not automatically get back his computer, floppies and disks seized by the authorities during a raid on his residence here in June as the court had ordered confiscation of the case property.

Gilani owes his discharge to the fortuitous discovery made last month by his counsel V.K. Ohri of the Military Intelligence’s revised opinion about the sensitivity of the document in question. The Government’s decision to withdraw the case was a dramatic turnaround because, as recently as on January 7, it said that the Military Intelligence’s opinion was ‘‘irrelevant, untenable and issued without authority.’’