Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin and Congress MP from Assam Gaurav Gogoi on Wednesday joined the growing outrage over the Assam police summoning two senior journalists, Siddharth Varadarajan and Karan Thapar, in a case registered on sedition charges.

“I strongly condemn the action of the Assam Police in issuing summons to senior journalists @SVaradarajan and #KaranThapar of @thewire_in,” Stalin wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

“The summons have been issued despite the Supreme Court granting protection in a related matter only days earlier. No copy of the FIR and no particulars of the case have been furnished, leaving only the threat of arrest. Section 152 of the BNS is being misused as a substitute for the repealed sedition law to suppress independent journalism.

“A democracy cannot survive if asking questions is treated as sedition,” Stalin wrote.

The two journalists have been told to appear before the crime branch of Guwahati City police on August 22. They have been warned that they may be arrested if they do not comply.

“While the FIR registered against Varadarajan in Morigaon on July 11, 2025, pertains to a complaint filed by a BJP officeholder over a story published in The Wire on June 28, 2025 (IAF Lost Fighter Jets to Pak Because of Political Leadership’s Constraints’: Indian Defence Attache), it is not apparent what article or video the Crime Branch FIR relates to,” The Wire reported.

Gaurav Gogoi, the Congress’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, linked the Assam police action to the state of the state.

"Another day, another reason when Assam is in the news for all the wrong reasons,” Gogoi wrote on X. “Greed, corruption, incompetency, lawlessness. This is not the Assam way. The people of Assam want a leadership that will build an Assam of their dreams.”

The Assam cops summoning the journalists for sedition – which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had claimed has been done away with in the new criminal laws – has led to outrage across the spectrum.

“The sovereignty of India is not endangered when the Chinese occupy Indian land. It is imperilled when Karan Thapar does an interview and the Wire publishes an article,” wrote the writer Kapil Komireddi on X.

Several journalists’ bodies have also condemned the police action against the journalists.

This year, India was ranked 151 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, a slight improvement from the previous year's ranking of 159.