Police forcibly take away uplinking equipment from Kantipur FM (Breaking News 12:05 a. m.)

October 22, 2005
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Police returned to Kantipur FM premises on late Friday-nearly three hours after they had lef-and forcibly took away key equipment used to uplink the FM’s transmission to Bhedetar station in the eastern region.

A police officer briefing his superiors about the situation of Kantipur FM hours before forcibly entering into the FM premises and taking away equipment. (Photo courtesy: B. Karki/Kantipur)
According to staff with Kantipur FM, four vans of police arrived at the station at Lalitpur and forcibly took away encoder, satellite modem and digital audio recorder. They left the station at around 11:15 p. m.

Earlier, police had surrounded the FM station Sunday evening after the FM staff and management refused to cut off their uplinking facility as demanded by a team of officials sent by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC).

Wires in disarray at the radio control room of the Kantipur F. M. after the mid-night raid (Photo courtesy: B. Karki/Kantipur
Kantipur FM management held that they have been using the uplinking facility by following all the regulations enforced by the government. They demanded written orders from the MoIC team if it wanted the FM to shut down its uplinking facility.

The MoIC team said they had orders to disable the uplinking facility as it was against the newly introduced media law. When they informed their superiors at the MoIC about FM staff’s stand, the Ministry sent in police instead of written orders.

After nearly a five-hour-long stand-off, the MoIC team left the Kantipur FM premises at around 8 p.m. saying that they were satisfied with the information provided by the station and that they will submit their technical report to the Ministry on Sunday when the office will resume.

It was not known immediately what led the government to send security personnel at around mid-night to seize equipment from the leading FM station. The station is owned by Kantipur Publications—the leading private sector media house in the country.

Earlier, media groups, opposition parties and rights groups had unequivocally condemned the government’s action against the Kantipur FM on Friday.