This story deserves mention on the International Day against drug abuse and illicit trafficking today. Because 20 years on, it is still relevant.
I was in Manali for an assignment. Incidentally, I got a tip-off that a foreign national, a septuagenarian, had allegedly been caught for illicit trafficking of Rs 2 crore drugs. I thought why not visit the local Police station, where he was lodged, for a spot story.
I went there, covered it, and traveled back to Shimla, my place of posting.
Much later, I read a front-page news story in an English news daily about a foreign national convicted in NDPS (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances) Act, waiting for justice in a Shimla jail The story was pro-convict and said that he was a social worker, hearing and speech impaired, and keeping him like this in prison was a violation of human rights.
When I dug out further, he turned out to be the same person who was caught in Manali and was later convicted, He looked fine at that time, so my journalistic mind started working. I took permission from the jail authorities for an interview with him. To my surprise, the person, whom I found quite normal at Manali Police station, answered my questions in writing through his son.
I got the information that a particular foreign media was influencing the whole issue in favor of the jail inmate. Our editor, a bold journalist of his time, asked me to go ahead with the story because, in the NDPS Act, the conviction rate was significantly less in those days.
The newspaper, a national daily I worked in, published it on the front page, holding that foreign media was allegedly putting pressure on the release of this convict. The next evening, my office sent me a communiqué from the Embassy of that country, which condemned my story and said it was false, and called for a contradiction in the newspaper.
I referred back to the cop, who headed the Kullu district and was friendly to me.
“Don’t worry! What you wrote is all correct. I have documents that this convict who posed as a social worker is wanted by Interpol. You can mention that in the newspaper," said the cop. I did that with the consent of the editor.
The Embassy did not respond, but the report added fuel to the fire. One fine day, I got a call from my colleague in the afternoon. “Ma’am, please come to the office immediately. So many hearing and speech impaired people have come here and are silently agitating, showing your story,” he said. On reaching the office, I was shocked to see that many locals, who knew me, were a part of that agitating group. Somehow I conveyed to them in sign language that whatever I wrote was based on facts.
Thank God, the whole communication was soundless!
They went back, and what returned was a story in our newspaper from Delhi, which conveyed that the said convict and social worker was being kept in jail in violation of human rights. It said an NGO had filed a petition in court, seeking justice for the foreign national.
This perturbed me as it contradicted my story carried by the Chandigarh edition of our newspaper. I kept quiet.
After some days, the court dismissed the NGO’s petition, holding that there was no human rights violation in the case. I was happy that it subtly upheld what I wrote. But at that time, little did I know that this was not the culmination.
A few months later, there was small news from the national capital in the newspapers that the same foreign national was released on ‘clemency’ (at that time, the friendship ties between India and the nation he belonged to were being strengthened).
What a climax!
Probably, I couldn’t do more as a journalist in this case.
No journalist can make a difference beyond a point.
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