Summary:
In a serious attack on the freedom of press, Jammu and Kashmir police registered a first information report (FIR) against TOI's Srinagar correspondent M Saleem Pandit for his news report about stone-pelting attacks on tourist vehicles that left four women injured on Sunday.The police denied the stone-pelting incidents and filed an FIR on the basis of a complaint submitted by 10 local travel agencies who alleged that Pandit’s report was false and written with “malicious intention to disrupt the peaceful tourist season” in Kashmir.The complaint claimed that the news report had “created an atmosphere of threat amongst the citizens of the country.” Interestingly, the police denial itself admitted that two tourists had been injured "because the vehicles came in the middle of an area where pelting was going on.”.