New Delhi: Before Independence, Indian journalists were all too familiar with sedition cases. But 18 years after the British left India , a journalist was arrested in Bihar for criticising then chief minister KB Sahay . The journalist, Thayil Jacob Sony George, became the first editor to be charged with sedition in an independent India .

George spent three weeks in Hazaribagh Central Jail, and f ormer defence minister VK Krishna Menon rushed to Patna to defend him. The arrest was a mark of his courage and lifelong commitment to speaking truth to power.

I n his seven-decade-long career in journalism , George was a staunch advocate of press freedom , especially during the Emergency. He passed away at the age of 97 in Bengaluru on Frid

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