The bail petition of 3 journalists sent to jail on charges of allegedly leaking the paper of the UP Board Intermediate English exam was submitted before the Session Court of Ballia district on Wednesday.

The leak had led to the cancellation of the Inter English examination in 24 districts.

On the other hand, the indefinite sit-in stir of Ballia journalists began on March 30, has now been converted into a token hunger strike & entered its second day on Wednesday.

Their counsel Mithilesh Kumar Singh said that “Following rejection of the bail plea of the three journalists — Ajit Ojha, Digvijay Singh & Manoj Kumar Gupta — in the lower court in Ballia on Tuesday, their bail plea had been submitted before the session court on Wednesday".

He further mentioned that the date of hearing on the bail plea is awaited.

Meanwhile, the protest of journalists, which was started as an indefinite sit-in at the Ballia district headquarters on March 30 & converted into a token hunger strike from Monday continued on Wednesday.
Chief general secretary of Rashtriya Patrakar Mahasangh, one of the journalists’ organisations taking part in this protest under the banner of Sanyukta Patrakar Sangharsh Morcha, Madhusudan Singh, said, “Apart from contesting in court for justice for our three colleagues, we are continuing the protest in support of the demands, including suspension of the district magistrate & superintendent of police for taking action against those who exposed the paper leak incident.”

Singh said that “We are also demanding withdrawal of cases against journalists & proper investigation in allotting UP Board examination centres to unaided institutions as it would expose a major scam".

Three FIRs were lodged under sections of the Indian Penal Code, Uttar Pradesh Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, 1998 & IT Act with Kotwali, Nagra and Sikandarpur police stations in the case of leak of UP Boards Intermediate examination of English paper on March 30.

The DIOS & 17 others had been arrested on the same day while with the progress in investigation, the number of arrests crossed the mark of 50. The STF is also investigating the matter.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the LatestLaws staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Source Link

Picture Source :