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| 13 November 2004 | Saturday | 29 Ramazan 1425 |
FM radio goes off the air after police action
LAHORE, Nov 12: Transmission of a private FM radio station was suspended after police reportedly took control of its premises on Friday evening and arrested two of its staffers.
"We have orders from high-ups," a senior police officer told Dawn. However, he added that the action had been taken against FM-103 on a case registered under the Maintenance of Public Order.
Channel's station manager Shafqatullah said he had not been informed about any reason for the action by the police or any other official of the Punjab or federal government.
He added that around 25 policemen, some of them in civvies, had raided the station premises in the LDA plaza on Egerton Road after Iftar. He said the policemen arrested three staffers, Arshad, Abdul Ghafoor and Nauman. Arshad, however, was later released.
Mr Shafqatullah claimed that most of the equipment had been seized by police, causing the suspension of transmission. A couple of days ago, police had arrested two journalists working for the channel after they were accused of holding a protest against the government's health policies on the premises of the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC).
The two journalists, Farhat Abbas Shah and Afaq Shah, were accused of putting on air provocative material which, according to police, was likely to disturb public peace.
On Thursday, a court granted bail to the two journalists. The police action was apparently triggered by a controversial report earlier in the week in which the working of the PIC had been criticized.
The radio had been broadcasting news bulletins produced by a foreign channel's Urdu service, which apparently brought it into conflict with the official regulatory authorities. As for the health programme, Mr Shafqatullah said, it had been run by current affairs programme manager Farhat Abbas Shah without the consent of the FM-103 administration. "We have served a show-cause notice asking him to explain his position." However, he said he believed that this was not the real issue. Broadcasts from the foreign news channel could be the reason behind it. "The government is in a better position to explain," he said.
Mr Shafqatullah said that the radio station did not need a separate permission for transmitting the Urdu news bulletin when it already had a licence issued by the government regulatory authorities.
"Yes, if the government had any objection or wanted to proceed against the Urdu transmission, it (the government) is required to fight its case in the Council of Complaints of Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority," he said.
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