HC dismisses plea seeking direction to media on word 'martyr'

New Delhi, Feb 19: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday dismissed a plea which sought directions to the media to refer to the deaths of security personnel as 'martyr' or 'shaheed' instead of terming it as a killing.

The petition was filed in the Delhi High Court on Friday (February 15), a day after dastardly terrorist attack in South Kashmir's Pulwama in which 40 CRPF personnel were martyred.

The HC had the declined to give an urgent hearing to the PIL which was filed by advocate Abhishek Kumar Choudhary. Choudhary objected to media reports using the words "killed" or "died" while referring to CRPF personnel who laid down their lives on February 14 in terrorist attack.

The petition came up before a bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice C Hari Shankar and the petitioner had insisted that it be heard on Friday itself.

The bench refused to give it an urgent hearing and reportedly said, "This is not a plea seeking bail. Someone's liberty is not at stake. Not today. There is no urgency."

A convoy of 78 buses with over 2,500 CRPF personnel were travelling from Jammu to Srinagar on February 14 when a Jaish-e-Mohammed suicide bomber rammed a car laden with explosives into one of the buses. Such was the impact of explosion that the bus was reduced to a mangled heap of metal and over 40 personnel were martyred.