Key Points
Supriya Sharma was booked after reporting on hunger in a Modi-adopted village.
She later described the experience and its impact at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2026.
Sharma linked her case to a wider pattern of pressure on journalists in India.
SPEAKING AT THE OSLO FREEDOM FORUM held on June 1, 2026 in Norway, Journalist Supriya Sharma, executive editor of the news portal Scroll, shared an anecdote of how one of her investigative reports landed her in legal trouble. During her address, she remarked upon the current state of press freedom under the incumbent government and shared a personal experience of hers.
In 2020, Supriya reported on the conditions of the village folks in Domari, a province located in Uttar Pradesh which was ‘adopted’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Situated in his constituency Varanasi, the village was bought directly under the PM’s control under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana which aimed to ‘holistically develop’ villages and posit them as role models. Supriya reported on how during the COVID-19 pandemic, residents of Domari village often went without food and faced hardships.
Later, an FIR was fired against her which accused her of breaking anti-discrimination laws and printing defamatory matters. The complainant — a woman named Mala Devi — was a resident of the Domari village, and alleged that Surpiya had wrongly reported that her condition had worsened during the coronavirus-induced lockdown in the absence of emergency food support.
At the Oslo Freedom Forum address, Supriya spoke up about her story highlighting administrative failures that placed her under the radar of authorities, and also underscored the issues of other journalists who have faced similar tactics.
On June 8, 2020, Supriya’s story reporting upon the plight of the Domari villagers was published on the Scroll’s website. Her report highlighted how the poor people in the village, who were left out-of-work due to the pandemic and the lockdown, were left without food due to a dysfunctional Public Distribution System (PDS). She also pointed out that the relief food kits promised by the state government had hardly reached the village.
What made Domari’s story newsworthy, according to Supriya, was that even though the village was ‘adopted’ by PM Modi and had direct contacts with the country’s top leader, it still suffered from hunger.
One of the residents Supriya interviewed was Mala Devi, a Dalit sanitation worker whose income had stopped during the lockdown. Sharma reported that without a ration card, Mala received no assistance from the district administration and was forced to take up odd jobs and even beg on the streets of Varanasi.
However, in the FIR filed against Sharma and Scroll’s editor-in-chief Naresh Fernandes, Mala Devi denied making any such statements. She claimed that when Sharma visited her house in Domari, she had clearly told her that “neither she nor her family faced any problem in getting food and water.”
The FIR had charged Supriya and Naresh Fernandes under IPC sections 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) and 501 (printing matter that is defamatory), along with various charges of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
Mala alleged in the FIR that Sharma falsely wrote that she worked as a cleaner and dishwasher and slept with only tea and bread in her stomach. She clarified that she works as a sanitation worker with the Varanasi municipality on an outsourcing basis. “By writing that I and my children went hungry during the lockdown, Sharma mocked my poverty and my caste, because of which I have suffered mentally. It has hurt my standing in society,” she stated in her complaint.
In her speaker's address, Supriya stated that ever since PM Modi took charge in 2014, it had become the norm for journalists and activists to be booked under false cases. To avoid a possible police arrest and upon the advice of a human rights lawyer, Surpriya left her home after the FIR was filed against her. It took two months for her lawyers to obtain her protection from arrest.
Even though Supriya calls the case a ‘a minor inconvenience’ as she wasn’t arrested and sent to jail, she expressed her concerns over how other journalists and activists weren't as lucky and were unlawfully arrested or detained.
She cited the case of Siddique Kappam, a muslim journalist working for a local malayam newspaper, who was apprehended by the police when he was en route to Uttar Pradesh to cover the protests over the Hathras rape case. He was booked under the anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and spent 28 months in jail.
Another Journalist who faced similar consequences, Supriya said, was Mohmmaed Zubair of fact-checking news portal Alt News. He was arrested over allegedly hurting Hindu sentiments with a tweet that dated back four years.
Supriya alleged that both Kappam and Zubair were muslim journalists who were targeted because of their profession and their religion by the “hindu-supremacist BJP government led by Narendra Modi.” She further said that such tactics of silencing voices of dissent were common as Modi wanted the media to be on his side.
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