The court emphasized the importance of freedom of the press and the need to exercise inherent powers to prevent abuse of process of law.

JUDGMENT :

M.A. Chowdhary, J.

1. This petition has been filed under section 561-A J&K Cr.P.C. seeking quashment of the FIR No. 105/2018 dated 28.04.2018 registered at police station Kishtwar, wherein the petitioner-accused person was found involved in the commission of offence punishable under section 504, 505, 506 and 336 RPC.

2. Petitioner/accused pleaded following facts:

(a) that the petitioner is a reputed journalist and associated with Early Times Newspaper, Jammu and Kashmir, as also with Times Now English News Channel and has broken down various stories of national importance. The petitioner earned lot of respect amongst the masses and carved out a special and unique place for himself amongst the journalist fraternity. He constantly highlighting the issues which are relating to masses and also reporting the administrative lapses and police brutalities from time to time due to which he is not in good books of the administration and police officials and they are looking an opportunity to settle the score so that the petitioner could be prevented from reporting anything incriminating against the administration and police officials of the District. The respondent Nos. 2 to 4 are inimical to petitioner and have number of times directly and indirectly threatened the petitioner of dire consequences and have even warned him that they will file multiple FIRs against him and on the basis of those FIRs the dossier will be forwarded to District Magistrate Kishtwar with recommendation to impose Public Safety Act upon the petitioner.

(b) That District Development Commissioner Kishtwar vide communication dated 25.04.2018 directed the police to register an FIR under section 504, 505, 506, 336 RPC against the petitioner on the instance of the respondent No 4/complainant with further direction to police to investigate the matter in detail under an intimation to his office; that the allegations leveled against the petitioner that during the intervening night of 12th and 13th April, 2018 the respondent No. 4 had chat with India Today Channel during midnight march at India Gate, Delhi and the petitioner who is working as a reporter of Early Times newspaper in Kishtwar took the screenshot of the news bite and uploaded the same on his facebook account which shows the picture of respondent No. 4 and anchor/reporter of India Today news channel and the said screenshot also shows the picture of Asifa the eight years old rape and murder victim of Kathua, the petitioner addresses India Today and apprised them that respondent No. 4/complainant is hailing from Kishtwar which is 330 km away from Asifa's village and stating to them to check the credentials of persons before uploading anything on TV; that the complainant alleged that besides attack on his privacy and security the petitioner in his comments responded to the comments of two persons and termed that the complainant is doing this all for cheap publicity; that the petitioner put his security among the public at grave risk by doing such act when he away from home and has exposed and threatened his privacy; due to this propaganda, the public can lynch him over such a sensitive issue and since he has a large family at his native town, his family members especially youth and friends are bereaving in anger and contacted him on phone and there is every apprehension of breach of peace due to attack on his reputation, privacy and security in the open public domain on the internet due to false propaganda by the petitioner on social media.

(c) That the complainant has also criminally intimidated and extorted the petitioner few months back to pay him money and threatened to spoil his image and reputation in public and the matter was reported to police at that time but no action was taken by the police for the reasons best known to them, as such, he is being constrained to request the District Development Commissioner to direct the police to take legal action so that justice is provided to him; that the respon