Mangaluru, Dec 20: Eight journalists from Kerala covering the anti-citizenship law protests here a day after two persons were killed in police firing, were detained by the city police on Friday.
They were released about seven hours later at Thalappady on Karnataka-Kerala border after the intervention of Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Mangaluru city police commissioner PS Harsha earlier said several Keralites had entered the city in the guise of journalists.
The Malayalam television journalists were detained outside the Wenlock Hospital, where those injured in the violence were being treated. Police allegedly snatched away their equipment and cellphones, saying they were not accredited journalists.
A viral video-which was not independently verified-showed Harsha interrupting a journalist on-air from the hospital. Though the reporter showed his identity card, the commissioner rejected it saying it was not a government-issued accreditation card. The reporter and his support staff were taken to a police van.
Soon after their detention, Kerala revenue minister E Chandrasekharan asked the state chief secretary to contact the Karnataka government and to probe the detention of journalists.
Karnataka chief minister B S Yediyurappa told reporters in Bengaluru that he had received a letter from his Kerala counterpart. "The journalists had no identity cards. We have asked the police to release them. Only seven-eight persons were detained and not 40," he said.
Police released the journalists at Thalappadi and returned the confiscated equipment around 3.30pm. "No case was booked against them," a police source said.
After returning to Kerala, the journalists said they were treated like criminals. The reporters said they were on-air from 8.15am, and the police commissioner asked them to leave the hospital.
Outside the hospital, police asked for their identity cards, and detained them.
"We were forced to remain in the police vehicle for four hours before shifting us to Mangaluru Town South Police Station," Mujeeb Rahman, senior reporter of Asianet, said. "Some of us were made to sit on the bus's platform, and were not allowed to talk to each other.
Rahman said others from the national and Kannada media were allowed to report. Police, however, said nearly eight journalists from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu were also held.
Cameraman Sumesh Morazha of News18 said they were not shifted to the commissioner's office as claimed by the police.
Pratheesh Kappoth, a cameraman with Asianet, felt the journalists reporting from the hospital and airing the versions of the relatives of the slain men, could have provoked the police.
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