Arnab Goswami is in the news again, and this time for some interesting reason. He has been imposed with a non-bailable arrest warrant by a Srinagar court at the behest of a PDP MLA, who has been miffed by the allegations of corruption imposed on him by Arnab and his channel, Republic.
Arnab Goswami had accused PDP MLA Naeem Akhtar of indulging in corrupt practices. Akhtar is touted to be close to PDP chief and ex-CM Mehbooba Mufti. These allegations were made on the basis of a letter written by the then BJP spokesperson in Jammu and Kashmir, Khalid Jahangir, to the then Governor, N N Vohra. The allegations did not go down well with Naeem, who filed a criminal defamation case against Arnab Goswami and his channel.
It was in this respect that a local court in Srinagar had summoned Arnab Goswami. When requested for exemption, the court refused him the same and has now issued a non-bailable arrest warrant. Arnab, however, is undeterred by the warrant. He told OpIndia in a firm reply, “I have heard there is a non-bailable warrant against me. For whatever reasons the court wants me arrested is up to it, but our journalism which has the support of the people will not be impeded.”
This is not the first time that a right-wing journalist has been prosecuted for speaking the truth. Sudhir Chaudhary, a famous journalist from Zee News and another right winger, has had his own fair share of legal troubles. Be it the fake extortion case imposed by Congress politician and business tycoon Naveen Jindal, or the FIRs slapped on him for having dared to cover the Dhulagarh riots of 2016, right-wing journalists have had to face the brunt of the left-liberals if they even dared to point a finger against them. Even Madhu Kishwar, a noted journalist, had been issued an arrest warrant, just because she minced no words while bashing the pro-separatist elements in Jammu and Kashmir.
Moreover, Arnab Goswami himself has been slapped with an FIR from a Delhi court for allegedly using illegal means to retrieve crucial data about the controversial case of Sunanda Pushkar’s death. At the behest of a complaint filed by the main accused, Congress MP and ex UPA minister Shashi Tharoor, the local court has ordered a police investigation into the same. So it is not new for our firebrand journalist, who has never minced any words when it came to bashing the left-liberals for their hypocrisy. We only wonder whether the propaganda as peddled by the left-liberals would even sustain for long in this case.