The CPI(ML) strongly condemns the Assam Police’s move to slap charges under sedition in a new guise (Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita) against The Wire journalists Siddharth Varadarajan and Karan Thapar. The targeting of two of India’s most respected journalists is a deliberate attempt by the BJP regime to criminalize journalism and intimidate the press. The two journalists have been summoned to appear before the Guwahati Crime Branch without being informed of the specific complaints or the details of the charges against them.
This is the second FIR against The Wire in just two months. The fact that the Guwahati Crime Branch issued fresh sedition summons on 12 August 2025, the very same day the Supreme Court issued notice on The Wire’s petition challenging Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and granted protection from “coercive action” by the Assam Police, makes these actions especially brazen and contemptuous of judicial authority.
Another case of sedition on trumped-up charges was also filed against journalist Abhishar Sharma on 21 August 2025 by the Guwahati Crime Branch.
The cases against The Wire journalists and Abhishar Sharma reflect an eerie pattern of repression, with Assam being turned into a laboratory for communal-corporate fascist offensives on people’s rights and democratic ethos. They come at a time when the BJP Government in the state is waging a large-scale campaign of evicting tribals and Bengali-speaking migrants from their homes, handing over vast tracts of land to corporates and big business, and enforcing this dispossession through brutal police repression.
The CPI(ML) demands the immediate withdrawal of the summons and the sedition cases against the journalists. We also reiterate that Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita is nothing but a dangerous reincarnation of the colonial sedition law and must be scrapped.
-- Central Committee, CPI(ML) Liberation (August 20, 2025)
