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CPI lashes out at trial by media

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Communist Party of India on Wednesday said it was pained to note the growing tendency to conduct medial trial and deliver verdicts even before investigating agencies completed their work or filed charge sheets.

Terming this as “unfortunate,” the party Central Secretariat said that during the past few days a section of the media — particularly few private television channels — has thrown to the winds the caution of the Supreme Court by running stories about cracking of plots of serial bombings in several cities, including Ahmedabad.

It said dramatised versions of certain events, not live players, and parts of investigations had been telecast as facts “with the intention to malign an entire religious community. What is more dangerous is that the educated section of the Muslim minority is being maligned of being part of the terrorist conspiracies.”

It was strange that most of the “stories on unearthing the serial bomb blasts” conspiracy was based on investigations conducted by the police of Gujarat, which is “not known for its fairness and secular impartiality.”

It said the Gujarat police earned notoriety in fabricating false evidence and faking encounters, including the one of Sohrabuddin. Recently, Union Minister S.S. Vaghela from Gujarat had alleged that the detection of an unexploded bomb in Surat was masterminded by the State police.

The party said it would be prudent that the police in Gujarat were restrained from giving “imaginative stories on its probe before filing the charge sheet. In place of slandering an entire religious community, the cases should be probed without any pre-determined mindset.”

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