On Mon, Feb 6, 2012 at 4:25 PM, Srikanth Ramakrishnan
<parakara.ghoda@gmail.com> wrote:
I agree with you completely. While I've never been dragged to a Police station, the Coimbatore Police made me delete ALL my photos on the camera, and the Bangalore Police took away my memory card.
This is really a shame. Did they specify under what law they were doing this?
Since these situations are cropping up on photo walks, here are some ground-level suggestions for individual volunteers or groups embarking on these:
1)Familiarize yourself with 'photo restrictions' in your city/state: These may differ, and none of us know all the restrictions in each state - maybe a news photographer or someone could be asked in advance, since we seem to have good media contacts in India in general? (Tinu or anyone else: do you think there is someone who could help provide this info? We are all ignorant here. Individuals would feel more confident if they knew whether or not what they are doing is illegal.)
2)Stand your ground to the extent possible: Keep asking which law is being applied if any police action - charging with a case, arrest, confiscation - is brought up. I know this is very very hard to do when faced with police personnel, but still. The police are less likely to bully someone who can firmly ask questions - and who does not get intimidated by the law.
3)Create a chain of 'help': Call another wikipedian for help - if there are 2-3 or more wikipedians present, divide up tasks, so that one-two people can engage the cops while another makes phone calls. When Pranav called me, I in turn called lawyer friends who clarified that P&Co were not breaking the law. I then felt more confident to ask them to 'stand their ground'.
4)Cultivate contacts with media, including photographers, who may have this information or lawyers in your city who can help with this information (including legal students).
This is not meant to imply that no larger help is needed - it's not an either/or, and institutional support may be needed in some cases. These are just small suggestions to empower individual on the spot.
Best
Bishakha