SC dismisses special leave petition by jailed journalist Rupesh Kumar Singh in UAPA case

The Supreme Court has rejected a special leave petition by independent journalist Rupesh Kumar Singh challenging a Jharkhand High Court order that denied him bail in an Unlawful Activities Prevention Act case, Live Law reported on Thursday.

A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Rajesh Bindal on January 27 said it was not inclined to interfere with the order issued by the High Court on December 6, 2023.

The Jharkhand-based journalist was arrested on July 17, 2022, on the allegation that he had arranged funds for Maoists. The arrest came after Singh posted a thread on the social media platform X, talking about the impact of industrial and air pollution on the residents of Jharkhand villages. He has been in custody since.

In his special leave petition, Singh called his arrest a “malicious campaign of persecution”, Live Law reported. The journalist said he had reported on several subjects, including gunfights with security forces and the arrests of Adivasis based on false claims of them being Maoists.

Singh was also among 40 Indian journalists whose phone numbers appeared in a leaked database in 2021, which reflected that they were potential targets of cyber surveillance through the use of Pegasus spyware that the Israeli NSO Group claims to sell only to governments.

In his petition, the journalist said he was targeted…

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