A recent judgment of the Delhi High Court has given India’s independent media a rare opportunity to celebrate. Last week, Justice Neena Bansal Krishna quashed the criminal FIR against digital news portal NewsClick and its founding editor, Prabir Purkayastha, bringing to an end, at least for now, a prolonged legal ordeal that had come to symbolise the vulnerability of journalists in contemporary India.

The court’s observations were remarkable not merely for the relief they granted but for their unmistakable clarity. Justice Krishna held that the allegations of cheating and criminal breach of trust were fundamentally unsustainable in law.

She further noted that the money-laundering charges, in the absence of a valid predicate offence, had no legal foundation. Most strikingly, she declared that........

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