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Mumbai police face flak for note on journalists

MUMBAI, APRIL 7. The Mumbai Police Commissioner, A.N. Roy, today came under fire in both Houses of Maharashtra Legislature for his circular, which prohibits subordinate police officers from providing information to journalists.

The Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena launched a scathing attack on Mr. Roy charging the police chief with resorting to ``censorship''.

Raising a point of information in the Lower House, BJP leader Gopinath Munde, said, ``never before such a censorship had been clamped by a Mumbai Police Commissioner,'' which hampered news gathering by journalists.

Stating that a delegation of Crime Reporters' Association had submitted a memorandum to him, the former Deputy Chief Minister charged that Mr. Roy wanted that all information go through the Commissionerate on the lines of CBI.

The ``censorship'' imposed by the Police Chief has crossed all limits that existed even during the emergency, he charged and handed over a copy of the jouralists' memorandum to Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh who was present in the House.

In the Upper House too, the BJP-Sena members criticised the Commissioner's action.

Mr. Madhu Chavan (BJP) said unlike with the CBI, which has limited cases on their hand, Mumbai is a happening city and journalists need information on a daily basis. Their right to information can not be curtailed. --UNI

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Mumbai police face flak for note on journalists

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