They called us terrorists: Journalists share first-person account of the Patiala House incident

Mangalore Today News Network

Feb 17, 2016: A group of lawyers on Monday attacked journalists and students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University at the Patiala House court where student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was to be presented. Kumar has been charged with sedition. Here’s what some of the journalists had to say.

 

’Delete video or we’ll smash your phone’

Sonal Mehrotra, an NDTV journalist, was threatened of being beaten up if she did not delete the video she had recorded on her mobile. Mehrotra recalled that IBN7 journalist Amit Pandey was present with her inside the courtroom when the lawyers attacked them. He was slapped, kicked and beaten with sandals, she wrote, in her first-person account.

’Looks like a terrorist’

 

 

DNA reporter Azaan Javed was called a terrorist by the group of lawyers in New Delhi’s Patiala House court. "That one looks like a terrorist. He is from JNU," Javed recounts a lawyer having said when he spotted Javed hiding inside the court premises. He writes that he was attacked by around 8-10 people who asked him to run away after finding out that he was a journalist

Another DNA journalist Ritika Jain wrote of how she felt unsafe even inside the courtroom of a district judge. "One lawyer, with a look of violence on his face, walked into the courtroom with a lit cigarette on his lips. He saw me, tapped his ash and asked for my phone," Jain said. She had to hide inside the courtroom for 45 minutes before escaping from a back door.

’Saale Pakistan Zindabad bol rahe hain, maaro saale ko’ is what a journalist from The Telegraph heard inside the Patiala house court on Tuesday. Basand Kumar Mohanty shared that a Malyalam TV channel anchor Manu Shankar among others were roughed up by the angry mob for doing their job. Female journalists were not spared and they also had to face abuses and assault of the attackers.

’Delhi Police did nothing’

Amiya Kumar Khushwaha of news agency IANS was slapped several times without any provocation from his side before he was rescued by some lawyers who recognised him. Amiya recounted that the Delhi Police personnel deployed at the court premises did absolutely nothing to control the situation.