Tamil Nadu magazine publisher freed on bail

Reporters Without Borders hails journalist A.S. Mani’s release on bail today on an order that his lawyer managed to obtain from a Tamil Nadu appeal court yesterday. The publisher and editor of the Chennai-based magazine Naveena Netrikkan, Mani will nonetheless have to remain for the next month in Chidambaram, which is 250 km from Chennai. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 august 2010 Chennai magazine editor still held after one month, tortured Reporters Without Borders appeals to M. Karunanidhi, the chief minister of the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, to have all the charges against A.S. Mani, the publisher and editor of the Tamil-language magazine Naveena Netrikkan, withdrawn after a court in Chennai rejected a petition for his release on bail on 10 August. Arrested on the orders of Police Commissioner S. R. Jangid on 19 July after publishing an article about police corruption, Mani is being held on trumped-up charges, including one of attempted murder, and has been physically and psychologically tortured. “We strongly condemn the violence to which he has been subjected while in detention,” Reporters Without Borders said. “His persecution by the police is unacceptable and the proceedings initiated against him seem to be an act of revenge. The government must free him at once and punish those responsible for these crimes against the press.” Mani already spent a month in prison in 2009. On his release, he told Reporters Without Borders: “Press freedom and press rights are being considerably curtailed by political pressures, particularly in Tamil Nadu. The press is not able to expose the evil at the roots of the society.” Reporters Without Borders has interviewed Professor Krishnaswamy, the head of the A.S. Mani Support Committee. A.S. Mani has spent nearly a month in detention. What can you tell us about the conditions in which he is being held? A.S. Mani was taken into custody at 10:30 a.m. on 19 July and was cruelly tortured at Egmore police station (in Chennai). During his first night in prison, the police stripped him naked and beat him until he lost consciousness. When he woke up and asked for something to drink, Police Inspector Chandrasekaran urinated into a bottle and forced him to drink the urine. What are the charges against him? The police showed no warrant when they arrested him and the staff of Naveena Netrikkan did not learn of his arrest until the following evening. Since then, he has been held on two trumped-up charges, one of which is the attempted murder of a police informer, A.N. Senkottaiyan. As A.S. Mani was arrested at 10:30 in the morning and this attempted murder did not take place until 11 a.m., it has to have been trumped up. The other charge is an escape attempt during the night of 20 July. That is also impossible as he was unconscious all night as a result of being brutally tortured. Meanwhile, he is still being denied access to a lawyer. How have the court appearances gone? A judge went to the police station at 10 a.m. on 20 July at Police Commissioner S.R. Jangid’s request and, without even seeing or speaking to A.S. Mani, ordered his transfer to Puzhal Chennai prison. He was taken before the same judge on 22 July, again in Egmore police station. This time the judge ordered that he be held in the police station for five days. It should be stressed that this was against the law. I would also like to point out that A.S. Mani’s relatives paid 65,000 rupees to Jangid and Chandrasekaran at the latter’s request on 20 July in the hope that he would not be tortured any more. What is his state of health? We do not know very much. We only know that he saw a doctor once, in Chromepet general hospital. But he was forbidden to mention the torture to the doctor. And by giving the doctor a bribe, the police got a certificate saying that he was fine.