The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has ordered The Caravan magazine to take down a story it published on the subject of the Army’s alleged “torture and murder of civilians in a restive Jammu,” the Delhi-based monthly said in a statement on X. The order, which The Caravan says it will challenge, targets an article that was part of a series of articles on the magazine’s February issue on “The Military Under Modi”.
Screams from the Army Post: The Indian Army’s torture and murder of civilians in a restive Jammu written by the journalist Jatinder Kaur Tur, reports among other things on allegations by civilians in Poonch and Rajouri, two heavily militarised districts in Jammu. The report documents allegations that the Army was torturing and sometimes killing civilians under suspicions of involvement in terrorist activity.
This included interviews with the family of a registered Intelligence Bureau informer in the region, who was picked up for questioning after the December 22, 2023 terrorist attack in Poonch that killed four Army men, and died shortly thereafter. The report says that ‘blood money’ was paid by senior military officials to the family of the informer after his body was returned to them.
The Hindu has reached out to the I&B Ministry for comment.
The Caravan and legal hurdles
This is not the first time that The Caravan has faced legal pushback to its articles. In 2011, Arindam Chaudhuri, the founder of the now-defunct Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) obtained an injunction against the magazine for a profile on him from a court in Silchar, Assam, accusing the magazine of defamation. The article was restored in 2018 after the magazine won an appeal to reinstate it. Mr. Chaudhuri was arrested in 2020 in a GST evasion case.
In 2014, the magazine published a story featuring an interview with Swami Aseemanand, who was charged for masterminding the 2007 Samjhauta Express train bombing. The article featured interviews with Aseemanand himself, who spoke openly of his role in the attack. Audio recordings of the interviews from prison, along with transcripts, were later released by the magazine when he threatened legal action. Aseemanand was acquitted by a National Investigation Agency Special Court in March 2019.
