Freelance journalist, arrested under Official Secrets Act (OSA): Here’s all you should know about OSA

Team Udayavani, Sep 20, 2020, 4:24 PM IST

Delhi police officials have arrested a veteran Indian journalist on suspicion of spying for China under the Official Secrets Act (OSA)

Police officials have also arrested a Chinese woman and her Nepalese associate, and claimed that they were paying huge amounts of money to the freelance journalist Rajeev Sharma for allegedly providing sensitive information.

Rajeev Sharma, wrote on foreign and strategic affairs,  he was a regular contributor to several Indian news outlets, and was also wrote occasionally for Global Times

Official Secrets Act

The Indian Official Secrets Act, 1904 was enacted during the time of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905.

It was an amended and more stringent version of The Indian Official Secrets Act (Act XIV) of 1889, brought in at a time when a large number of powerful newspapers had emerged in several languages across India.

According to  FirstPost, It mentions that one cannot approach, inspect, or even pass over a prohibited government site or area.

The secrecy law broadly deals with two aspects, spying or espionage, which is dealt with in Section 3 of the Act, and disclosure of other secret information of the government, which is dealt with in Section 5.

According to the Act, helping the enemy State can be in the form of communicating a sketch, plan, a model of an official secret, or passing of/transfer of official codes or passwords, to the enemy. Punishments under the Act range from three to fourteen years of imprisonment