New Delhi: After nearly 12 hours of detention, the Assam police after midnight on Wednesday (March 26) arrested senior digital media journalist Dilwar Hussain Mozumder in Guwahati under different charges, including violating the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, his family told The Wire.

Significantly, on Tuesday afternoon, the Assam police had asked Mozumder, chief reporter with the Guwahati-based web portal The CrossCurrent, to report to the city’s Pan Bazar police station as he was covering a protest held by the youth wing of the Assam Jatiya Parishad (AJP) regional party.

The protest was against an alleged recruitment scam in a cooperative bank of which chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is director and BJP MLA Biswajit Phukan its chairman.

Upon his arrival at the police station, a short distance away from the Assam Co-operative Apex Bank – the site of the opposition party’s protest – Mozumder was detained.

Soon after, he said in a Facebook upload that he was detained for asking questions to the bank’s managing director (MD) Dambaru Saikia about the alleged scam.

For some time, Mozumder, an intrepid journalist, has been reporting on the allegations made against the bank’s authorities.

Earlier in the day, amidst slogan-shouting by the protesters, when Saikia arrived at the spot, Mozumder had turned his mic to him. A video clip later issued by The CrossCurrent showed Mozumder asking Saikia to stop so that he could pose a few questions related to the allegations by the protesters.

Saikia could be heard asking Mozumder to instead come upstairs to his office, which Mozumder did along with the cameraperson.

According to Mozumder’s colleagues, Saikia in his office however asked Mozumder to ask the protesters to leave the site.

Arup Kalita, editor of The CrossCurrent, told The Wire, “Strangely, as he was leaving the bank, Mozumder got a call from the Pan Bazar police station, asking him to report at once. On reaching there, he was detained.”

A family member said that since Mozumder was fasting, his wife reached the station with iftaar but that this was not allowed to be taken to him. Neither were his medicines, which he needs as he is a diabetic.

“Around 11 pm, on the continued insistence of fellow journalists, his wife was finally allowed to go inside and give his medicines.”

Around midnight, a police officer told the waiting family and journalists that he was arrested under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The slip given to the wife, however, did not mention the complainant’s name; neither did it mention where the incident took place.

The sensational arrest of Mozumder, who is also the assistant general secretary of the Guwahati Press Club, has been widely criticised by fellow journalists, civil society activists in Guwahati and opposition party leaders.

Reacting to the police action on March 25 evening, AJP president Lurinjyoti Gogoi said in a statement that detaining a journalist on duty is not acceptable in a democracy.

Assam Pradesh Congress Committee media department chairman Bedabrat Borah too condemned the act, saying, “The freedom of press and freedom of journalists have been attacked.”

Several opposition party leaders also reached the police station and stood with the waiting journalists and Mozumder’s family.