'Editors Guild's Crowdfunded Manipur Report' leads to police case against 4

Three members of an Editors' Guild of India fact-finding team who traveled to Manipur to investigate media coverage of the ethnic violence were accused of fabricating and sponsoring their report, which led to the filing of a police case against them.

In the study issued on Saturday, the Editors' Guild of India (EGI) stated that there are unmistakable signs that the state's leadership turned partisan during the dispute. In a summarizing statement, the report noted among its many remarks that "it should have avoided taking sides in the ethnic conflict, but it failed to do its duty as a democratic government which should have represented the entire state."

Social worker N Sarat Singh from Imphal filed a first information report (FIR) against Seema Guha, Sanjay Kapoor, and Bharat Bhushan, the three visitors to Manipur from August 7 to 10. The FIR also names the EGI president as an alleged accuser.

The EGI report's description of the image of the burning structure in Churachandpur district as a "Kuki house" is stated in the FIR.

On May 3, however, when widespread violence erupted in the district, 65 kilometers from the state capital Imphal, as a result of a protest by the hill-majority Kuki tribes against the valley-majority Meiteis over the Meiteis' demand for Scheduled Tribes (ST) status, the building was a Forest Department beat office that was set on fire by a mob.

A police officer, sub-inspector Jangkholal Kipgen, reported the damage to the Forest Department beat office as having been caused by "a large number of angry crowd" using "fire or explosive substances" in a FIR that was submitted on May 3 evening.

The EGI yesterday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, accepted the error in its report and said it is "being rectified and an updated report will be uploaded shortly." "... We regret the error that crept in at the photo editing stage," the EGI said.

There was an error in a photo caption in the report released on Sep 2. The same is being rectified and updated report will be uploaded on the link shortly. We regret the error that crept in at the photo editing stage

— Editors Guild of India (@IndEditorsGuild) September 3, 2023