In a shocking incident, a journalist from Odisha’s Balasore district, who was arrested for allegedly thrashing a cop, was chained to his hospital bed while undergoing treatment.<\/p>\n
A photo of the journalist, Lokanath Dalei, had gone viral on different social media platforms. In that picture, Dalei was lying down on a floor of the hospital with his legs attached with a handcuff and tied using a iron chain to a hospital bed.<\/p>\n
According to sources, Dalei was reportedly called by Nilagiri Police on Wednesday morning for allegedly abusing and assaulting a Home Guard. He was later hospitalised after being allegedly assaulted by cops at the police station.<\/p>\n
On April 4, Home Guard Niranjan Rana had lodged a complaint at Nilagiri police station alleging that Dalei abused him in filthy language, beat him up and threatened with dire consequences when he was on duty.<\/p>\n
Dalei, serving as a Nilagiri reporter of a local media house, has alleged his arrest is a revenge bid over some news reports against the police. He demanded action against IIC and second officer of the Nilagiri police station.<\/p>\n
Senior journalists of Odisha condemned the police excess against the journalist and demanded strong action against the police personnel responsible for this.<\/p>\n
Expressing deep concern over the incident, Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said media is the fourth pillar of democracy.<\/p>\n
“In a democracy, one should respect differences in opinions. But putting a handcuff on a journalist like a professional criminal is not acceptable in a healthy society,” he said.<\/p>\n
Pradhan has urged the senior police officers to conduct a proper inquiry and take strong action against the officials involved in this act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a shocking incident, a journalist from Odisha’s Balasore district, who was arrested for allegedly thrashing a cop, was chained to his hospital bed while undergoing treatment. A photo of the journalist, Lokanath Dalei, had gone viral on different social media platforms. In that picture, Dalei was lying down on a floor of the hospital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-odisha","category-main-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16370,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16368\/revisions\/16370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.testctsl.in\/indiafirstepaper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}