India’s press freedom is in peril. The nation has plummeted to the 151st spot out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index as the state turns the screws on journalists for simply exercising their freedom of speech.

The crisis has been building for years. As Reporters Without Borders, a global press advocacy group, pointed out in May, Indian journalists are facing repression, detention and abusive legal proceedings – all for doing their job.

This is not an abstract threat; it is real. We’ve seen it again this week in the police cases filed against journalists Siddharth Varadarajan, Karan Thapar and Abhisar Sharma.

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