Hyderabad, June 15: The Congress party has strongly condemned Telangana Police for registering cases against Youth Congress activists for a post on social media regarding rising cases of missing women in the State.
Stating that the case was false, fabricated and politically motivated, All India Congress Committee (AICC) National Spokesperson Dr. Sravan Dasoju, while addressing a press conference at Gandhi Bhavan on Saturday, demanded that the police immediately withdraw the case against Telangana Youth Congress General Secretary and In-charge Social Media Dept Venkat Gurijala and two others.
Earlier, Sravan, along with TPPC Working President Ponnam Prabhakar and Youth Congress president Anil Kumar Yadav, submitted a memorandum to Director General of Police Mahender Reddy demanding the withdrawal of case registered against Youth Congress activists.
Sravan informed that a leading Telugu daily published a report on 11th June stating that 545 missing cases, especially of women and girls, have been reported in the last 10 days. Based on the report, the Youth Congress published a post (Graphic Design) questioning the functioning of State Government and Police. He said the post was aimed at creating awareness among the people so that they could take all precautionary measures to minimize the missing incidents. He said that the graphic design and the content do not have any abusive or provocative or misleading false information and were very much within the statutory framework of Freedom of Expression. However, he said that the Cyber Crimes Police Station has filed a case under IPC 505 (1)(b), whereas the contents of the graphic design does not reflect any sort of negative intention to cause fear or alarm to the public and does not induce to commit an offense against the state or public tranquillity.
The Congress leader said that the content of graphic design was only a reproduction of the news article published in Eenadu, which includes even kidnapping of children. As a responsible citizen and an office bearer of Indian National Congress, Venkat Gurijala made an attempt to remind the responsibility of the police department considering the gravity of the situation. “If reporting the missing cases and questioning the government is a crime, then why the similar case was not booked against the newspaper which originally published the report,” he said.
Sravan alleged that the Telangana Police was sending a wrong message that it would implicate people in a false case if they ever question the functioning of State Government and Police. He said that Director General of Police Mahender Reddy himself had Tweeted that of 545 missing people, nearly 300 had remained untraced. Similarly, of 116 missing persons, 83 could not be traced in Cyberabad Police Commissionerate. Likewise, 51 out of 100 and 43 out of 87 missing persons are still untraceable in Hyderabad and Rachakonda Commissionerates respectively. “The missing cases along with statistics reported by the police department through press release made by Ms Swathi Lakra, IGP of Women Safety & In-charge of ADG-CID, Telangana and also social media post on official and verified twitter handle of the DGP, Telangana (@TelanganaDGP) corroborates the news item,” he pointed out and said how activists of Congress party could be targetted for re-production of factually correct information.
He also informed that based on the FIR filed by Cyber Crimes Police Station, few other newspapers reported that the Telangana Yuva Synyam social media post claimed that the number of missing complaints were on the rise and 82 people had gone missing in the state within 24 hours on Saturday. However, he clarified that the specific contents of FIR and the news Items published were not connected to Telangana Yuva Synyam and Venkat Gurijala and others are falsely implicated in this case without any crime committed by them.
“The false case and subsequent media reports led to character assassination of Venkat Gurijala and two others and their further career has been sabotaged,” he said while requesting the DGP to review the matter immediately.