‘State mulls action against Goswami under OSA’
MUMBAI: Home minister Anil Deshmukh on Tuesday said the state was taking legal opinion on the possibility of action against Republic TV’S editor-inchief Arnab Goswami under the Official Secrets Act, 1923, for alleged leaking of sensitive information related to the Pulwama attack and Balakot airstrike two years ago, based on transcripts of the journalist’s Whatsapp conversation released by Mumbai Police last week. The minister said that the Centre should take cognisance of the chats as they are directly related to national security.
Goswami, however, in a statement said that “it is beyond absurd to suggest that expecting India to strike back at Pakistan, after the Pulwama attack, was a crime”.
“We have taken serious note of the 500 pages of leaked Whatsapp messages between Republic TV’S Goswami and former Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) chief Partho Dasgupta. In the messages, Arnab speaks about the Balakot airstrike two days before it happened on February 23, 2019. It is a serious threat to national security if such sensitive information was leaked to the media house. The Centre should initiate strict action into it. On the state level, we are checking if Maharashtra Police can initiate action. I have sought legal opinion if action can be initiated under section 5 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923,” said Deshmukh.
The OSA is a British-era law against espionage and has punishments ranging between three and 14 years.
A delegation led by Maharashtra Congress general secretary Sachin Sawant met Deshmukh and demanded action in the leaked chats case. .
Responding to the allegations, Goswami said, “It is beyond absurd to suggest that expecting India to strike back at Pakistan, after the Pulwama attack, was a crime. It was publicly available information and thousands of journalists reported, wrote, broadcast and analysed in the same direc There are thousands of articles from that time suggesting a hard and tough response from the India Forces.”